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CRIME!

TERROR!

DETECTION!

MYSTERY STORIES

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THE WORLD'S WORK (1913) LTD.

LONDON KINGSWOOD

QHOSTS & QOBLINS

Weird Tales
Quaint Conceits
Hair-Raising
Happenings

THE WORLD’S WORK ( 1913) LTD.
London Kingswood

CONTENTS

SIR RALPH'S AGINCOURT ARMOUR R. Thurston Hopkins

THE HEAD OF EKILLON
HOODOO ON THE LADY GRACE
FAR TOO CONVENTIONAL
HONEST JOHN
THE GHOST HOUSE
THE HILL ROAD
DEATH DRUM
ARMAND’S RETURN

Henry Rawle
Frank Bronstorph
Frank Clements
J. Moffat

i. WlLMOT ALLISTONE

G. Casey
E. W. Grier
Henry Rawle

THE FURRY GOBLIN OF LYCHPOLE HILL

R. Thurston Hopkins

ARACHNE Frederick Graves

THE PSYCHIC TYPEWRITER John West

THE TOWER OF THE FORTY COMPANIONS

R. Thurston Hopkins

THE SUICIDE GOD Roland Wild

THE FINGER OF KALI Garnett Radcliffe

BEYOND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS R. Thurston Hopkins
THE EVIL THAT GROWS M. Kelty

SIGNALS IN THE FOG R. Thurston Hopkins

PAGB

3

IS

20

28

32

35

38

44

52

56

63

69

76

9i

100

107

118

“3

QHOSTS & QOBLINS

Weird Tales Quaint Conceits
Hair-liaising Happenings

Sir Ralph’s Agincourt Armour

And His Fear of Qoblins and Demons

by R. THURSTON HOPKINS

Y OU may not think there is a
single ghost still alive in the
stately homes of England these
days. If you read the newspapers, you
will probably get the idea that our
ghostly intruders have been exposed to
so much vulgar boosting and investigat-
ing by psychical researchers that they
have all fled from the old country in
disgust. Anyway, the newspaper re-
ports on our ghostly inhabitants are not
at all reassuring. Every day you will
read such headlines as:

“RADIOGRAPH OF HAUNTED
CUPBOARD AT GIBBET MANOR
REVEALS THAT GHOST IS A
NEST OF RATS.” “THE GHOST
WAS A YARD OF CHEESE-CLOTH 1
WOMAN SENT TO PRISON FOR
FRAUDULENT MEDIUMSHIP.”
“‘NO GHOSTS IN THE TOWER
OF LONDON, SAYS A YEOMAN OF
THE GUARD WHO HAS LIVED
THERE FORTY YEARS.”

Anyway, Peter Bawtree Gifford did
not read newspapers. They seemed too

full of trouble and crime; of stocks
and shares — other people’s stocks and
shares, of course. Peter, who was a
city clerk, had nothing left to invest
out of his salary of three pounds a week
after he had paid for his diggings in
Brixton and his dinners in the City.

No, he did not bother to read news-
papers. He saved his shillings to buy
books and music score paper and
stamps. Peter was that terrible and
yet wonderful thing, an unknown com-
poser.

At the time this story opens he had
composed several dance tunes which
had been the round of all the London
music publishers and had all returned
to him with the unerring speed of
homing pigeons. It did not seem to do
Peter any good that the sort of music
he composed was just a little bit “un-
usual.”

And it must be admitted that our
composer was not a good showman and
salesman. He was too shy and nervous
to bang on the big drum and shout his
wares.

That, I think , is all you need know

4

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

about Peter Giffard before his lucky
star flashed twice in the sky and inter-
rupted the dreary monotony of his
days. The first flash killed his only re-
lative— an aged and somewhat eccentric
aunt who lived in an ancient manor
house on the Sussex Downs. The second
flash arranged his exit from the count-
ing-house of Messrs. Grab, Graball and
Grabbit.

This famous law firm had been hold-
ing the sack over Peter’s head for some
months; but his lucky star certainly
arranged that the sack should descend
on the day he learned that his aunt had
left him the ancient house in Sussex
and all that she possessed, which was
a little over six hundred pounds.

The sack was a blessing travelling
incognito, for without it Peter Giffard
might have invested Aunt Bawtree’s
money in gilt-edged stock and con-
tinued his ineffectual and humdrum life
in the counting-house. With the sack
Peter became a changed man. He sud-
denly became alert and ready to seize
Mr. Opportunity and drag him through
his doorway.

His aunt’s solicitor handed him a
letter which brought corrugations of
perplexity to Peter’s forehead as he
read it.

“Dear Peter” [it ran], “By the time
you will read this letter I shall have
passed into some other world. Well,
I’ve lived a long and happy life in the
ancestral home with my beloved Downs
around me, and when my time comes I
shall not cringe or beg an extension. I
have made my will, in which I bequeath
to you my house and whatever money I
may possess at the time I bid this world
adieu.

“As you know, Bawtree Manor has
been held by our family from time im-
memorial and our dead are buried three
coffin deep in the old church. Although
I leave the house to you, and you will
become legally seized and possessed of
it, it will never be wholly yours. It was

never entirely mine. There is someone
else who has always bad ineradicable
claims on it.

"If you ever take up your residence
in Bawtree, you will soon become aware
of this occupant. He is Sir Ralph Baw-
tree — or I should say the apparition of
Sir Ralph who died and was buried in
the year 1476.

“For the last twenty years Sir Ralph
Bawtree and I have been on the most
friendly terms. In late years he was
my counsellor and guide and I never
made any decisions about my business
or household affairs without first taking
his opinion. He never once misled me.

“Dear Sir Ralph; I owe him a great
deal! Yes, Peter, don’t laugh or think
your poor old aunt was crazy. I really
do owe Sir Ralph a great deal. He
helped me to find happiness in my old
age, and he made me understand that
Death is far more wonderful than life.

“If the contents of this letter have
not already over-leapt the bounds of all
human belief, I should once again beg
you to believe that I am not crazy. But
I can only repeat that the ghost of Sir
Ralph is perhaps the one real and abid-
ing thing in Bawtree Manor, and if you
ever meet him you will find that he is a
charming and courteous ghost and cap-
able of giving you considerable help in
your everyday life.

“Do be kind to Sir Ralph! Indeed,
always be kind of ghosts; they are such
sensitive things. Few people give any
thought to the supernatural in these
days, and the way some of the old
families are treating their family ghosts
is simply scandalous.

“Only the other day I read that Lord
Worthing allowed the B.B.C. to set up
their wretched microphones in the
haunted chamber occupied by the
Headless Lady of Hampleton. No
wonder that the Headless Lady retired
to her comfortable lead coffin and
stayed there till these wireless people
had returned to London!

SIR RALPH’S AGINCOURT ARMOUR

“As our dear Vicar often said in his
sermons, the world is so mercenary and
irreligious nowadays.

“Well, dear boy, this is my last good-
bye to you. I hope you will live a long
and happy life. Believe me, ever in this
world and the next, your affectionate
aunt,

“Jane Bawtree.”

“P.S. — I have just repeated the
multiplication table to myself, to make
sure I am perfectly sane, and I find
that my brain is working splendidly.”

Even now while Peter was reading
this amazing document, it suggested a
gorgeous advertising stunt for placing
his dance tunes before the public. He
was sure that Aunt Bawtree would have
no objection if he entered into a
partnership with the family ghost to
build up the family name and fortune
once again. Thinking over the whole
thing, the idea grew more and more
attractive; and after allowing a month
or two to elapse, out of respect for Aunt
Bawtree, he succumbed to it and com-
menced to make preparations for boost-
ing his theme song entitled “Dancing
with a Ghost.”

He had then moved in to Bawtree
Manor House, ten miles inland from
Lidoville-on-Sea, that abounding and
blatent new seaside resort on the Sussex
coast. The manor is a fine old partly-
timbered house standing on a ledge of
Windover Down. You reach it by a
wavy-faced flagged path over a great
still lawn and pass into the hall
through a lichened and weather-worn
stone porch dating from the days of
Henry Vin.

The Southdown Motor Coaches take
the manor house in their circular tours
of lovely Sussex. Also many motor-cars
filled with visitors drive up. This was
something that was very favourable to
Peter’s scheme. When the idea for
boosting his music came to him, this
solitary old house seemed heaven-sent.

S

GHOST MUSIC

“No musical
publ isher
will accept
my music for
what it is
worth,”
Peter argued.
“And so it
behoves me
to whoosh it
on them as
spirit music
composed by the family ghost. That’s
the stuff!” he muttered, rejoicing and
expanding.

“Who is this Sir Ralph Bawtree who
composed, ‘I Raise my Hat to my
Shadow’?”

That’s what everybody is going to
ask — at least, I hope so. I’ll tell the
world about my dear aunt’s pet ghost.

Spread it about. Shout it — loud]

Whoosh! Oh, the fun of it! A ghost on
the go— A REAL LIVE ANCESTRAL
GHOST! Whooshing it on the pub-
lishers and concert agents. Why not?
You can put anything over if you
hammer on the door long enough. Just
like the Oxford Group and Christian
Science.”

Peter had engaged a village maid,
Emma Hickstead, to do “light” cook-
ing and house-work, and had retained
the help of Mrs. Foghel, an ancient
dame who had been in Aunt Bawtree’s
service for many years. Mrs. Foghel
was one of the village gossips, and he
looked upon her as his local broadcast-
ing station.

His idea was to allow the “secret”
of his experiments on spiritualism to
leak out as local gossip in the first place,
and so whenever Mrs. Foghel was
working in the house he behaved with
studious strangeness. The old woman
went back to her home frightened. She
told her family that Mr. Giffard was
acting “fair daft”:

“He’s even more scatty than old Jane
Bawtree ever was. He’s that excited

6

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

about some tune he is a writing on that
it simply puts my nerves on edge to be
in the house with him. ’E was knock-
ing things about and dancing^n the long
oak gallery just like a blooming
haunted Spirit.”

The words Peter muttered were ex-
tremely significant.

“ ’E said to me,” Mrs. Foghel said,
“these ere London folk be darn fools.
They don’t believe in ghosts like my
Aunt Bawtree did. But I believe in ’em,
Mrs. Foghel. And I believe that a ghost
could sing and dance and write songs
just as well as any beefy living fellow.

“ ‘Do you know, Mrs. Foghel, I met
the ghost of Sir Ralph last night in the
Long Gallery and we spent quite a jolly
evening together. I find that he was
flautist at the court of Henry V. We are
working together on a wonderful theme
tune called “Dancing with a Ghost.”
The whole country will ring with that
dance tune once we have finished it?’ ”

Tom Foghel, the old woman’s son,
was one of the two village policemen
stationed at Windover. He listened to
what his mother had to say, and said in
a lofty way that these:

“Jazz band musicians were funny
coves an’ were full of this ’ere hartistic
temperament.”

He also hinted that Mr. Giffard was
pulling his mother’s leg.

“I calls it something more than leg-
pulling,” Mrs. Foghel announced at
length. “Fair flying in the face of
Providence. Why, last night he had all
the lights turned out in the long gallery
and asked that dance-crazy little hussy
Emma Hickstead to dance while he
played his new bit of music, ‘Dancing
with a Ghost.’ Said that ‘unseen fingers’
influenced the keys of the piano. It’s
unholy, Tom — unholy.”

“Rot,” answered Tom. “When I was
off duty the other night Mr. Giffard
and me ’ad a pint of beer together just
like human beings, and I think he’s a
very sensible young fellow. I tell you
he’s been pulling your leg.”

"Don’t you have nothing nohow to

do with such pranks, my boy, or you
and me will be having words.” Mrs.
Foghel shook an admonitory finger at
Constable Foghel, and retired slowly to
her kitchen.

GOINGS ON

Soon the whole village was talking
about the “goings on” at Bawtree
Manor. Ghost dances and ghost music.
Ghost parties, seances, ghost hunts.
Later two or three London journalists
came down to interview Peter. They
pelted him with questions.

What did he think about the future
of ghost music? Did he think it would
be possible to induce ghosts of such
masters as Beethoven and Chopin to
produce new work through the auto-
matic writings of a medium? Had he
actually seen the apparition of his
ghostly collaborator? Or was he only
an unseen influence which pervaded
Bawtree Manor? Do you believe in the
old-fashioned ghosts with clacking
chains or the modernistic kind which
turn tables and write mysterious
messages on paper in glass cases?

“I can’t say anything about other
ghosts,” said Peter, very much in a
flutter under the quick fire of the re-
porters. “But . . . but . . . er . . . er . . .
our ghost is a very real and jolly fellow
. . . er . . . quite jolly. He is not old-
fashioned in his ideas, but certainly he
looks rather old-fashioned in his suit of
armour.”

And the pencils of the Sunday papers
scribbled: “Doesn’t believe in the
modern ghosts. Believes in the good
old-fashioned brimstone and blood
spooks.”

“And now tell us if it is true that you
are putting on a spook musical show?”

“Yes, that is correct,” said Peter, “if
you choose to call music induced by
Hertzian waves ‘spook music.’ I think
of it as something a little more digni-
fied.”

A few months later Peter was able

SIR RALPH’S AGINCOURT ARMOUR 7

to interest James Flansham, a well-
known theatrical magnate, in his ghost
music. Mr. Flansham sat at an enor-
mous glass-topped desk surrounded by-
newspapers and cigar ashes.

“Well, Mr. Giffard, I like your
music: it strikes a new note. Yes,
certainly, it is quite a haunting melody.
I've thought it over a lot and it seems
to me a mistake to take a theatre to
start with, anyway. You see, you would
need to put up £700 — a lot of money,
laddie; and it might be a flop. I don’t
want to see you fleeced of every penny
you have.

“Now what I propose is much better
and it won’t take more than £200. I
propose a thirty-minutes show at the
Excelsum Theatre. We’ll call it ‘Danc-
ing with a Ghost’ and make it dignified —
something that will impress the public.

I shall get a good artist to knock up
some scenery — a kind of enchanted
forest with ghostly white flowers and a
great cold crystal moon. When it’s
lighted I’ll bet it’ll look quite well. A
few stuffed rabbits and giant toadstools
will give the whole thing a kind of
natural appearance.

Then we’ll want a hidden chorus and
a crooning jazz-band. They sing and
play just before the curtain goes up.
That’ll put a ghostly atmosphere over
the audience before we shoot your stuff.
Then I know a new girl dancer. Babs
Danielli, a regular Salome. She’s got a
kind of slinky movement which will
just tone in with the tune. . . .

The first night of Peter’s musical
show came at last. DANCING WITH
A GHOST blazed in lights above the
entrance to the Excelsum Theatre.
James Flansham, a cigar between his
teeth, greeted his friends among the
crowd pouring into the marble and
chromium steel vestibule. Beside him
stood Peter Giffard feeling like a boy
about to play a tin whistle solo in St.
Paul’s Cathedral.

“Good luck, James! . . . Well, you
are going to show us something new to-
night, eh, old boy? . .

Newspaper critics, first - nighters,
society hangers - on, film stars — they
were all there. They slapped Giffard on
the back, indulged in quick whispered
jokes about making the ghost walk,
smoked fat cigars, decided that the
show was going to make him famous.

And always London made the back-
ground. Young faces, old faces, painted
lips and rosy cheeks, dark eyes, gleam-
ing eyes, rags and battered shoes, wide
white shoulders wrapped in warmest
furs, glad faces, tired faces, sad faces.

“Dancing with a Ghost” was to come
on after the interval. Peter’s show and
Miss Lulu Biffo’s Dancing Girls were
the principal attractions of the vaude-
ville programme. At last all was ready.
The singers hidden in the enchanted
wood had begun the theme song. The
moon gleamed whitely on the scene.
The curtains swung back and Miss
Danielli floated on the stage trailing
clouds of diaphanous drapings.

FLOP

kicked a stuffed
rabbit across
the stage and it fell on a jazz drum in
the orchestra with a deep resonant
boom. There was a ripple of laughter
from the audience. This minor calamity
flustered Miss Danielli and she tripped
and clutched one of the great oak-trees.
It fell forward with a bang. A hidden
musician stood there awkwardly clutch-
ing a saxaphone. . . .

Someone whistled in the gallery.
There was a burst of laughter. Several
people left their seats and hurried to

8 GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

the bar. One heard waggish remarks
and jibes . . . then a storm of cat-calls
from the gallery.

“Curtain! Band!” someone yelled.

A moment later the stage was filled
with tough-looking men in shirt-sleeves.
The magic wood behaved much more
magically than it had during the show
— it flew up the cavernous opening
above the stage and remained there
suspended between earth and heaven.
Property men tore up ghost cobwebs,
paper grass and giant toadstools.

“Excuse me, sir!” said a scene-
shifter. He brushed by Peter with the
"cold crystal moon” in one hand and a
bunch of paper hemlock flowers in the
other.

And that was how London dropped
the curtain on Peter’s hopes of fame as
a musician.

Peter stood in the lobby of the
theatre in a maze. He shuddered as he
again lived through that moment when
Miss Danielli kicked a stutfed rabbit
into the drum. Suddenly a very pretty,
a really attractive girl with smooth
dark hair came hurrying out of the
theatre. He drew aside to allow this
hurricane of charm and beauty to pass,
and as he did so he dropped a leather
music-case he was carrying. She tripped
over it and fell sprawling on the puce
carpet.

She said something which sounded
like “jam,” and groped about to pick
up her vanity-bag, fur and a roll of
paper.

“Oh! Look what you’ve done,” she
cried. “There goes my bag and ‘Danc-
ing with a Ghost.’ Not that I want that
silly dance — not after to-night.”

“Dancing wih a Ghost,” said Peter.
He stooped and helped the lady to her
feet. “So you don’t think much of this
dance song?”

“Well, Mr. Giffard’s ghost music
may be a knock-out down at Windover,
but he’s a frost in little old London.”

“Are you interested in music — pro-
fessionally?”

“Gee! No. I’m over here on a holi-

day. I’m an American: you do not
need me to tell you that, I suppose.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you’re not interested
in music,” Peter said glumly. “You see,
I composed ‘Dancing with a Ghost’
and I was hoping I might play it over
to someone who might really appreciate
that it has a certain haunting charm of
its own.”

Miss Betty Nostrand, from the
U.S.A., looked at Peter for the first
time.

“What do you mean? Say, are you
the man who owns that family ghost
down in Sussex? If so, I’m certainly
interested. I’ll say I am.” The girl who
was not at all embarrassed, looked at
him quizzically. “But Mr. Whatever-
your-name-is . .

“Peter Giffard.”

“But Mr. Giffard, I suppose the
ghost is only a phoney one — like your
enchanted forest?”

IMPUDENCE

This seemed to Peter the most
astonishing impudence. The girl must
be reproved.

“Our family ghost is quite an
authentic one,” he said stiffly. “He’s
Sir Ralph Bawtree and he’s just as
genuine as your Statue of Liberty. I
am one of his descendants as my name
indicates — Peter Bawtree Giffard of
Bawtree Manor. Sussex, England— at
your service.”

“Gee — the way you unroll that name
and address is just thrilling. You
might be answering the roll-call after
Agincourt or telling Duke William how
to write it out in the Domesday Book.”

“Sir Ralph,” replied Peter with slow
deliberation, “did answer the roll-call
after Agincourt.”

“Gee — that’s the swellest romantic
thing I ever heard of,” cried Miss
Nostrand; “and if Pop hears about this
I shall have him flipping across on tne
Queen Mary before you can say
knife.”

SIR RALPH’S AGINCOURT ARMOUR

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“And don’t look so sorrowful about
it, Mr. Peter,” she continued. “It’s not
going to hurt you any. Pop’s made up
his mind to buy an English manor
house and an English ghost, and, if as
you say, you are little shy in the bank
balance, why Pop’s worth a million
dollars and is willing to behave gener-
ously.”

"But ” and Peter hesitated, for

he could think of so many objections.
He chose one of the most harmless.
“How can I sell Sir Ralph? Aunt Baw-
tree would never forgive me if I did.”

“Well how about letting Pop and I
hire Sir Ralph for twelve months. Say,
Mr. Peter, that gets around it. I’ll
come and give Bawtree Manor a look
over when you say the word.”

“But Miss Nostrand, you do not
understand. I am out to sell my music;
net ghosts, if you don’t mind my say-
ing so.”

Peter spoke with such acrimony
that Miss Nostrand laughed, and he
had to laugh, and then they looked
into each other’s eyes, and possibly,
both were pierced by the arrows of
love at first sight without even know-
ing it.

“Say, isn’t there a restaurant some-
where near here? I’m just as hungry as
can be. Come along, Mr. Giffard, I
must hear some more about Sir Ralph.
It’s all just too swell to be missed.”

Peter led her into a small restaurant
in Coventry Street. He made himself
comfortable, while Miss Nostrand
ordered food for two without consult-
ing him in any way, and it was a meal
that was remarkably good to eat, but,
Peter thought, would be disastrous to
pay for. The cavaire and champagne
would set him back two or three
pounds.

“Say, isn’t this the craziest thing!”
she cried, giving him a dazzling smile.
“Twenty minutes ago we had not met,
now we are almost old friends. And
I’m coming down to Bawtree Manor
to-morrow to meet Sir Ralph. That’s

9

settled, isn’t it? Now listen — I’m paying
for these eats to-night because I kind
of stampeded you into this.

“No, no. You must let me pay . . .
if it’s all the same to you.”

“Peter Bawtree Giffard, I said this
banquet is on me,” Miss Nostrand
interposed firmly. “And anyway I’ll
dine with you when I come to Bawtree
Manor . . . er . . . that is if it’s all
the same to you,” she concluded,
parodying him.

I will not attempt to follow the for-
tunes of our hero from point to point.
He met Miss Nostrand frequently,
and gradually they became close
friends. To each other they became
successively Betty and Peter and Bet
and Pete.

Miss Noslrand came down to Wind-
over and put up at the “Dog and Duck”
inn. Peter knew now, only too well,
that he was falling fathoms deep in
love with her. He tried to think of
everything which would be unfavour-
able to such a love match. She was
spoilt, these rich American girls
thought they could buy everything in
the world with their almighty dollars.
She was brassy and cheeky. She was
an unquiet spirit rushing here and there
in search of sensation, amusement and
pleasure.

Besides, reason told him that this
sudden infatuation was absurd, that he
hardly knew the girl a few weeks; that
she was worth a million dollars and he
was almost a pauper; that her whole
background was different from his;
and even if they ever married it would
probably turn out a disastrous mis-
take.

But it was no good — he could not
dismiss the memory of that blue-black
hair, the magpie flash of her dark eyes,
the set of her red lips. Sometimes,
after a day’s tramp over the Downs
with Betty, he would return to the
gloomy old manor house, and sitting
beside the log fire try to recapture the
little intimacies of appearance he had
noticed during the day — the soft down

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

on her arms which turned golden in
the sunlight, the way she always
clutched his arm at one point below
the shoulder, the little blue birth-mark
on her bronzed neck, the blue shadows
which lurked beneath her eyes when a
long tramp fatigued her. These foolish
things gave him quick spasms of heart-
ache.

CRASH

One eve n i n g
Betty came across
the lawn with a
cable in her hand.

“It’s from Pop.”
Peter was looking
into blurred eyes,
into blurred, up-
raised eyes.
“Dreadful news,
Peter. His bank has crashed. You
see he was president of the Peoples’
Trust Company of New York—
every dollar he possessed was in
it. Poor old Pop.” She choked with
tears. “Oh! Peter, dear, my heart
aches. I always said to Pop let’s get
out of all this big business and live a
quiet life over in England. And he
always said, ‘soon . . . I’ve just one
more big deal to put over.’ Men
oughtn’t to go on and on giving their
souls to business. Ambition took him
and blew him up like a silly toy balloon
and then smashed him. Why couldn’t
Pop leave it alone?” She kept repeat-
ing in a whisper as they went towards
the frowning porch of Bawtree Manor.

Peter turned and got a moonlight
gleam of tears on Betty’s face. No
words came to his aid. He merely
looked down at her quivering figure.
She looked so pathetically humbled.

“It’s awful to think of him there in
New York,” said Betty staring before
her with eyes of despair. “At bay and
broken. I must go back to him by the
next boat.”

“Yes, of course,” Peter answered
hurriedly. “I will help you to make all
arrangements. You must not worry too
much, Bet. . . . Things may not be
quite so hopeless as you fear. I hate to
think of you going. I never thought
I’d be so ”

Betty’s brow wrinkled and she looked
away. “Dear Pete,” she breathed very
low.

“Suppose your father came to Eng-
land instead of your returning to New
York,” he put to her slowly. “Look
here, I’ve got an idea. Cable your
father to come to England and you can
both put up at Bawtree Manor. I have
my own two rooms in the west wing
you can have the rest of the place rent
free. What say to that?”

“That,” said Betty, “is a heavenly
way to get round it, and just like you —
you dear old fellow. But we’re not
quite broke. I still have a modest
$2,000 a year of my own. I couldn’t
ask you to turn the manor into a hotel.”

“But why not be my guests?” Peter
argued. “You admit that your father
is just mad about old houses, ghosts and
quaint English customs. Well, a month
here would steady his nerves and give
him a fresh interest in life. Now doesn’t
that sound good sense?”

“Well,” demurred Betty. “We might
take a cottage in the village.”

“But why do that when this place
is simply crying for the sunny influence
of a vivid and beautful girl of your
type.”

Betty raised eyes which held the
radiance of stars.

“Mr. Bawtree Gifford, of Bawtree
Manor, Sussex, England,” she asked,
“are you telling me that I am vivid and
beautiful.”

“Wei, yes,” said Peter with a ghost
of a shy smile. “In my opinion you are
vivacious and . . . and very beautiful.
That is if you’ll allow me to speak so
intimately."

“Gee — I’ll say I’ll allow you to call

SIR RALPH’S AGINCOURT ARMOUR

me beautiful. The way you said that.
You might have been writing it on a
description ticket for a museum piece.”

“Sorry,” said Peter. “I am afraid I
am no courtier. I say things in such
a terrible flat-footed way. You see, I’ve
never mixed with womenfolk. Aunt
Bawtree was about the only woman
friend I ever had. I don’t remember
my mother . . . you see she died when
I was a baby . .

For a few seconds Miss Nostrand
was filled with an unreasonable wave of
emotion. She felt she wanted to take
Peter in her firm strong arms and kiss
him.

Betty cabled to Pop and twenty-
four hours later received an answer:

“Saved $50,000 out of the crash.
Not bad as estimated. On my way to
England to meet your Ghost. Love. —
Pop.”

ENTER SIR RALPH

B y this time Peter
realised that life without
Betty would be impos-
sible. The thought of her
coloured everything h e
did. But how could he
ask Betty to marry him?
He had made a disgrace-
ful mess of his life; lost
his job, lost his money,
and almost lost hope. For
an hour or more he sat in the twilight
rumpling his hair and emitting
muttered ejaculations, which might
have been construed as expressions of
acute physical pain and groans of
despair.

But after much wasted time and
thought he walked over and pushed the
bell. Mrs. Foghel appeared mysteri-
ously from the cavernous “innards” of
the servants quarters.

“Ah, Mrs. Foghel, I gathered from my
solicitor that my aunt left a few dozen

ji

of very fine old brandy in the cellars.
I think this is an occasion on which a
bottle might be opened with beneficial
results.”

Peter was just about to pour himself
a third glass of aunt’s 1840 when a
curious noise in the corridor attracted
his attention. It sounded like the
clank of metal, and it seemed to be
coming nearer every moment. He
placed the bottle on the table, got up
and opened the door.

He heard the clock striking twelve.
He was quite calm, and felt his pulse,
which seemed to be “ticking over” quite
normally. The strange noise still con-
tinued and with it he heard distinctly
the sound of footsteps.

“Is that you, Sir Ralph. Come right
in. I’ve been expecting to see you for
some time.”

Peter spoke up as if from some deep
well of divination. He could not have
explained what power within him urged
him to speak those words.

The next moment he saw an old man
walk slowly into the room. His eyes
were kindly: his hair was bobbed and
fell just short of his collar. His gar-
ments, which were of antique cut, were
of some dark green fabric bound with
velvety dull yellow leather. A large
sword hung at his side and spurs were
on his boots.

"My dear Sir Ralph,” said Peter, “do
join me in a glass of dear Aunt Baw-
tree’s brandy.”

“Thank you, Peter,” he said brightly.
“That’s a good idea. I am much re-
lieved to find that you are not going to
treat me like an escaped lunatic or a
noise-effects man at a theatre. One or
two of your family have expected me to
rattle my chains, groan through key-
holes and walk about the house every
night. That kind of thing can be very
wearing to the nerves.”

“I expect you to sit down and drink
a friendly glass,” replied Peter by way
of greeting.

13

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

“Well, when you put it like that,”
said Sir Ralph, placing his helmet on
the table. I must say it all seems very
homely.”

He dropped into an arm-chair and
accepted a glass of the golden spirit.

“This is good sound brandy. It is
very difficult to get a man’s drink these
days. Only last night I popped across
to Longpat Hall to have a quick one,
and there was nothing left but a bottle
of Green Demon cocktail, such stuff
as only the perverted taste of modern
England could have invented. It tied
my tongue in knots and sent pins and
needles through my vitals.”

“Well, Sir Ralph, how do you find
things in the realms of faerie. I’ll wager,
a little more tranquil than in our con-
crete world of to-day, with its rush and
muddle, murders, sudden deaths and
rumour of war every morning.”

“My God!” cried Sir Ralph, at once
straightening up in the arm-chair. “You
don’t know what we ghosts have had to
contend with in the last twenty years.
My dear Peter, the whole ghost world
has changed — and not for the better I
can tell you.

“First of all, this radio business has
been a terrifying experience for all of
us. Everywhere we go we trip over
wireless waves. They hit us and bore
through us. I was riding down my
enemies last night and my horse and I
went a crasher on account of them.

“You see, we move in a different
space: we are all over the time dimen-
sion. Space is a bodily condition, but
we are out of our bodies, and occupy
all parts of the ether, so you see the
wireless waves simply drill us through
and through. I tell you, it is not too
pleasant to be chased across the fluid of
space by the tone-waves of a jazz band
or shaken to death by the vibrations of
a cinema organ.”

“Tough luck, that, Sir Ralph,” Peter
murmured, but he could not help
laughing.

GOBLINS AND DEMONS

Then Sir Ralph
spoke again, and his
voice sounded like
the sighing o f the
wind.

“You needn’t
laugh,” he said sadly.
“Foolish people come
to our haunts look-
ing for us and when
they see us they are
frightened. But they don’t think how
frightened we are. I am frightened
now.”

“Frightened? What are you fright-
ened about, Sir Ralph?”

“Goblins and demons,” he said,
glancing over his shoulder. “This old
house is full of ’em. They hang in
festoons from the oak beams across the
long gallery and they drop on one all
of a sudden. It’s all your aunt’s fault.
I told her over and over again that the
only thing to scare goblins and demons
away is electric light, but, as you know,
she would never have any other illum-
ination but candles. Now, Peter, do for
goodness’ sake take pity on me and have
electric light installed at once.”

“Did you ask Aunt Bawtree to have
electric light put in the manor?”

“Yes,” said Sir Ralph, rather
sheepishly, “but she said I was an old
fool to be frightened at goblins Your
aunt was quite a notable woman, but
she did not look after my comfort as
she should have done. No light in my
room — I am forced to emit the ghastly
green light I generally reserve for
haunting before I can see to put on my
armour. No hot-water pipes — how
would you like to go about the house
dressed only in a shroud, spotted with
churchyard mould, in twelve degrees of
frost?”

After much pleasant conversation
and making arrangements to meet once
a week for a friendly glass and an ex-
change of views, Sir Ralph finished his
brandy and rose to his feet.

SIR RALPH’S AGINCOURT ARMOUR

“Before you go ” Peter began.

“Well?” asked Sir Ralph.

“It’s like this, Sir Ralph. I’ve
squandered all the family fortune on a
silly, mad theatrical stunt, and now
I’m fairly in the soup. I was wondering
if you could give me any kind of help.
I don’t want to sell Bawtree Manor —
I don’t suppose it would bring in more
than £ 2,000 anyway. I want to hold on
to the old home. But how? You go and
talk things over with Sir Ralph if
you’re ever in trouble, Aunt Bawtree
said. He’s the only man who can help
the Bawtree family.”

"Indeed,” said Sir Ralph. “Did
she?” and looked very flattered. "I
doubt if I can help you.” Sir Ralph’s
eyes clouded. “I am so sorry, but you
see I have no earthly possessions of any
kind. Just one suit of armour and a
few rusty chains.”

“But can’t you think of some money-
making scheme — something to tide
one over a bad patch," Peter persisted.

Sir Ralph was just a little em-
barrassed.

"I am afraid my mind is not a com-
mercial one. I have my limitations. I
can’t creat money. And as I said I
have no possessions of any value. But
wait! I wonder. My suit of armour
is gold damascened work. Must be
worth £10,000. I was reading that the
Aubrey de Vere suit, which seemed
very similar to mine was sold to the
Metropolitan Museum of New York
for £25,000. I always keep my armour
in a locker of the gable-room at the top
of the servants stairway. I’ll look it up
for you to-morrow. Who-oo-oo, lucky
I thought of that. £10,000 would set
you right. Eh?”

DREAM ARMOUR

“What did I dream last night? It
was something ridiculous,” said Peter
to himself, as he smoked his morning
pipe in the library. “I remember I
laughed when I woke up about two

o’clock. Oh yes, about the family
ghost. It was all so perfectly ridiculous.
That confounded theme tune ‘Walk-
ing with a Ghost,’ has gone to my head,
invaded my inner consciousness.

“I knew that there was something
wrong somewhere, even while I was
sleeping. Aunt Bawtree’s brandy is a
cordial that must be approached and
savoured with respect. My head feels
quite muzzy. How many nights have I
been dreaming about Sir Ralph? One
or twenty?

“The old boy seems to have taken
quite a little niche of his own in my
dreams. He has dropped a pinch of
salt on the tail of my dream life. What
was it the old boy said about a suit of
armour? Ah yes: the Aubrey de Vere
suit of fluted armour which was sold
to the Metropolitan Museum of New
York . . . made £25,000. . . .”

Peter mused for a space.

“How absurd! A suit of armour
could not be worth £25,000! or could
it? Did the Metropolitan Museum
really pay such a sum for . . .”

Peter stopped short.

“Is there such a place as the Metro-
politan Museum of New York?” he said
aloud. “If so it’s queer that I should
first hear about it in a dream. Infern-
ally queer!”

Peter moved towards the telephone
book, turned up the number of the
British Museum, and phoned up.

“You there? Could you put me in
touch with someone who is an expert on
armour? Thank you. ... Oh, sorry to
trouble you, but can you tell me when
the Aubrey de Vere suit of armour was
sold in London?”

The curator’s voice came back quite
distinctly: “Yes, the suit was sold in
1938 to the Metropolitan Museum at
New York. It was formerly the
property of Lord Cranston. Yes, it
made the considerable sum of
£25,000.”

“Great Scott 1 ” Peter said. He was
excited and not a little scared. “How
did I come to know about the de Vere

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

*4

armour? How could I dream of a thing
I had never heard about before?
Hallucinations do not provide one with
such exact details.”

It became evident to Peter that Sir
Ralph had appeared in a dream and
told him about the de Ve're armour.
There was no other explanation. It all
seemed so infernally mysterious.

Peter must have been sitting there in
the library for some hours. All at once
he noticed a certain faint sweetness in
the musty surroundings of the dim
library. He looked up. Betty was
standing in the doorway.

“Hello, Pete,” she said. “You’re an
old hermit. Fancy sitting in this dusty
stuff old room on a beautiful morning
like this. Come out and dance and sing
and skip and jump.”

Peter cocked a grey eye at her.

“This place needs a woman’s touch.
I — look here, Betty. I’ve been mad
about you ever since that night I met
you at the theatre. I have hesitated a
hundred times on the point of telling
you I love you. But you’ve got to hear
it now. And you need someone to look
after you. What about letting me do
the job. Could you — do you think you

could stand it all — Bawtree Manor and
the ghost and me?”

She said:

“Gee, I’ll love signing my name
Betty Nostrand Bawtree Giffard, of
Bawtree Manor, Windover, Sussex,
Eng.”

That was along the latter end of
July. Early in September they were
married, and just to cheer the old
Manor House up a little, Peter had
electric light installed in all rooms.
Peter did not forget Sir Ralph’s little
den — the Gable Room. A hundred-
watt bulb just to scare away the
goblins!

Part of the wainscoting was cleared
away during the alterations and the
reader will naturally suppose that a
skeleton — say that of Sir Ralph Bawtree
— was discovered behind it. That was
not so.

What they did find was a complete
suit of armour. An official who came
down from the British Museum to value
it was much excited by the discovery.
He said it was almost as fine as the
Aubrey de Vere suit — possibly worth
£10,000. . . .

The Head of Ekillon

The Story of a Curse and a Reincarnation

by HENRY RAWLE

F OR nearly ten years I had neither
seen nor heard of Michael Roone,
and it was with some surprise that
I received from him a message, the
strange urgency of which I could not
well ignore.

Always he had been something of an
enigma to me; possibly his activities in
the realms of archaeology did much to
enhance this impression of mine, for
this dark science has ever imbued me
with a vague sense of the mysterious.
Among his more suspicious country
neighbours he had the reputation
almost of a mystic, and the old manor
house on the hill where he had lived
and worked for so many years in seclu-
sion was certainly remarkable in its
immunity from visitors.

However, knowing my friend to be a
man of great sincerity and one who
would not thus appeal to me without
good reason, I at once set off for that
remote part of Sussex where was his
home. Arrived at the gloomy old house,
I found him in a state of agitation

foreign to his usual nonchalance; a
nervousness which, I perceived, he was
at great pains to conceal.

Even after dinner when we had
adjourned to the more comfortable
atmosphere of the library, he seemed
strangely reluctant to broach the real
object of my visit. For some time, with
a fine affectation of naturalness, we dis-
cussed things in general and talked as
friends will, smoking the while; pre-
sently, however, with an abruptness
which was almost startling, he came to
the point.

“Look here, John, old fellow,” he
blurted out, “you must know that I’ve
not brought you all this way for
nothing. You may have suspected from
my message that there is something of
unusual strangeness which I must tell
you of. More than that, I want advice;
I must have someone to help me gain
a proper perspective of things.

“Queer things have been happening
in this house of late; unnatural things.
Happenings of a nature unutterably

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

16

weird for which I can find no name, no
explanation, unless it be within the
grim realms of approaching mad-
ness. . . .”

He broke off suddenly, glancing in
furtive apprehension about the room.

“Tell me,” he jerked out, “what do
you think; would you take me for a
madman?”

He almost glared at me.

“Certainly not,” I retorted. “I might
suspect you of nerves, but madness,
never. For one thing a maniac never
knows, never suspects his madness.”

His relief was plain to see; he went
on.

“It was soon after I had come into
possession of the decapitated mummy
that this — this persecution began. It is
a wonderful specimen: the preservation
is remarkable, although the hiero-
glyphics on the mummy-case are of a
character entirely unknown to me. The
aspect of the thing is certainly repul-
sive; the expression on the face is most
malevolent; it conveys an irresistible
impression of evil.

“How the head first came apart from
the body there is no means of knowing;
but this I know, that although time and
again I have replaced the hideous thing
in its proper position, nothing, at least
no ruse of mine, can keep it there! I
tell you, my friend, that I have watched
it lifted in the air as though by some
unseen hand and flung — flung, I say,
across the room!

“And that is not all. There are
strange noises about the house at night ;
incredible dreams disturb my rest.

More than once I have awakened
suddenly from deep sleep to find
crouching over my bed with awful in-
tentness a shadow vague and formless,
and yet of such an evil potency that I
have been transfixed with terror; there
has ensued a mental conflict most
horrible during which the unknown has
exerted an awful magnetism urging me
to submit my will entirely to its baleful
ends. . . .

“I have found myself weakening,

drawn upright in my bed, and then with
a terrific effort I have at last overcome
this dreadful hypnotism and sunk back
exhausted and all of a sweat upon my
pillow. . . . All this and more since
that ill-omened thing has been in the
house. Do you wonder, my friend, if I
am a little — well, apprehensive?”

THIS EVIL THING

His earnestness was such that I could
hardly doubt his veracity; it would be
easy, I reflected, to imagine such things
in a lonely place like this, with its
macabre collection of archaeological
relics.

“Tell me,” I said, “if you suspect
some strange connection between these
disturbing occurrences and this — this
latest addition of yours, why don’t you
get rid of the evil thing?”

He stared at me, aghast.

“Get rid of it did you say? Get rid
of it? Why, man, you don’t understand
— its priceless, its unique; it must be
over three thousand years old! To get
rid of it would be unforgivable. There
are collectors who would give anything
to get hold of such a prize.”

I murmured under my breath that
they would be welcome to it, for my
part. My host continued.

“But there is something else about
this mummy which makes it infinitely
more interesting to me; still, to-morrow
you shall see it for yourself.”

With this doubtful pleasure awaiting
me on the morrow, I went to bed, my
host allotting me a bedroom next his
own.

After breakfast next morning Roone
led the way to the long, low-ceilinged
room which was his museum. Here he
had gathered over a period of years
many curios of archeological value,
rifled from ancient tombs, unearthed
in excavations beneath the fierce sun of
many a foreign land. Gold ornaments
and trinkets; strange weapons with
handles of yellow ivory; crude vases

THE HEAD OF EKILLON

and gourds; weird carvings in wood
and stone.

As we went along my friend re-
marked on those objects which were
new to the collection since my last
visit; and now we came to the far end
of the room, where a great curtain of
black velvet hung in heavy folds from
ceiling to floor. With a gesture he flung
it back from the middle.

“And here we have the tomb of the
unknown . . .” he announced.

It stood on end against the wall, a
great wooden coffin elaborately carved
and moulded to the shape of a human
body. The lid had been removed and
stood alongside; this, too, was engraved
with weird figures and markings. But
it was not the lid nor even the mummy
itself that claimed my attention, but
the head.

It lay at the foot of the mummy-case
leering hideously into space. Certainly
my host had not exaggerated in his
description of the thing; never had I
seen anything so abortively suggestive
of evil ; the stark, malignant expression
of the face filled me with horror.

But what was this? I peered closer.
Impossible, and yet. ... I became
aware that my host was watching me
intently.

“Ah,” he was saying, “so you —
you’ve noticed it, then? You perceive
the — shall I say — resemblance? It’s
unmistakable, is it not? Tell me now,
don’t you see a strange likeness be-
tween that gruesome face and my own
features?”

I was silent; yet it was undeniable
that there existed a certain unaccount-
able similarity of appearance.

“It’s — it’s most strange,” I mur-
mured, “a peculiar coincidence. . . .”

Then, in an effort to distract his
attention, I ventured to remark on the
unusual legibility of an inscription on
the cover of the coffin.

“Oh yes,” he said, “it’s remarkably
clear, but of such an ancient etymology
that all my efforts at interpretation have
come to nothing: it’s very annoying.

17

But perhaps you may be able to help
on that point.”

I observed that I should be glad to
tackle the job, reflecting that at least
it would be something for me to do. As
we turned away I recalled my host’s
story of the animated head, and I was
relieved when once more the velvet cur-
tains were in place and we made our
way out of the room, for I had no wish
for a demonstration. Moreover, having
now seen the detestable thing, I was
quite ready to believe anything concern-
ing it; even his account of the shadowy
intruder in his bedroom was no longer
incredible to me.

The rest of the day I spent in the
well -stocked library poring over dusty
tomes devoted to the study of ancient
Egyptian etymology. But here I had
no more success than my friend, and
nightfall found me still without any
solution to the mysterious inscription;
nor could I, for that matter, trace any
similar characters in any of the
volumes which, so far, I had studied.

Not to be defeated, however, I con-
tinued my researches far into the night
My host, who had long been making
half-hearted attempts to keep awake,
presently arose, and bidding me an
apologetic good night, retired to bed.
I worked on, for now it seemed I had
come upon a clue; slender though it
was, I followed it up, only to find, an
hour later, that once again I had drawn
a blank.

THE SLEEP-WALKER’S DREAM

Eventually,
with some
disgust, I
gave up the
quest and
made my
way towards
my bedroom.
Reaching the
foot of t h e
stairs, I
paused in-

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

voluntarily; there were footsteps on
the floor above. With slow, measured
tread they were approaching the stair-
way; soon they would be descending.

Quickly I took cover; but I need not
have troubled. Michael Roone, for he
it was, passed within a foot of me, arms
outstretched, in his eyes the strange,
fixed expression peculiar to somnambu-
lists. Silently I shadowed him; across
the hall he went, unfaltering: down the
dark corridors he made his way straight
for the antique-room.

At the door he paused, then swung
it open and entered. After a momentary
hesitation I, too, was within that room
of vague distorted shadows. There he
was, drawing back the great velvet
curtains beyond which lay the thing of
horror. Pale moonlight played weird
tricks among the grotesque contents of
the room; it cast a fantastic mosaic of
light and shade upon the whole unfor-
gettable tableau.

The sleep-walker knelt on the floor
before the open coffin, his head drooped
on his chest. Presently a low moan
issued from his lips; then a great
shuddering convulsion shook him from
head to foot and he sprawled prostrate
upon the ground.

For a moment he remained rigid,
then, like one entranced, he rose slowly
to his feet, his gaze fixed upon that
monstrous head which now lay at his
very feet leering hideously up at him.
Now, his eyes still transfixed by the
thing, he slowly backed away until he
reached the door; then with a sudden
quick movement he turned and made
his way out into the corridor.

Overcoming with an effort my com-
plete amazement, I at once made haste
to resume my role of shadower and fol-
lowed him; along the corridors he
stalked, across the gloomy hall and up
the stairs, and it was with infinite re-
lief that I watched him at last re-enter
his bedroom and silently close the door.

My host next morning was strangely
morose and preoccupied; I refrained
from remarking on the inexplicable

events of the night before, but tenta-
tively enquired if he had slept well. He
roused himself with an effort.

“Last night,” he said at length, “I
had another of those dreams; this time
of such an awful significance that I can
no longer doubt the sinister conviction
that has for a long time hung over me
like a pall. It was a dream of extra-
ordinary vividness — if it was a dream;
it was more in the nature of some
bizarre experience.

“Last night I travelled in spirit —
how else can I explain it? — to some dis-
tant, unknown land; a land of great
stone monoliths and burning sand. I
was the central figure in a drama
strange and terrible: a cameo from an
existence of three thousand years ago.

“It was dusk and countless flares
threw a fitful glow upon the whole in-
credible scene. Many people were
gathered, dark-skinned and murmur-
ing, before an ancient temple, decorated
with carved monsters and hideous
masks. I stood waiting: my crime I
knew was great. Presently the mur-
muring grew in volume until at last
they were clamouring and shouting —
demanding my execution.

“I knelt before an altar: a great
curved sword flashed downwards, and
in a welter of blood my head rolled over
in the sand. As from afar, now, I
watched: the features blanched and set
into an expression of intense malevol-
ence — the self-same expression — the
self-same head, I say, that even as I-
speak lies glaring at the foot of that
accursed mummy-case!”

REINCARNATION

He broke off, trembling violently;
yet his voice was calm.

“You see what it means, my friend:
you comprehend; you are not forget-
ting the singular likeness between my-
self and that devilish head? It means
only one thing, I say: it means that I
am the living incarnation of that re-

THE HEAD OF EKILLON

pugnant thing downstairs. That you,
with your boggling eyes, behold in me
the reincarnation of some most evil
being who died at least three thousand
years ago.”

I stared aghast, bewildered; yet I
could not ignore the essence of prop-
ability in this amazing assertion;
especially since I had been a silent
witness of that fantastic ritual in the
museum. I had heard of stranger
things: moreover, such a theory could
account for many of the mysterious
mishaps which had lately befallen my
unfortunate host. I could hardly doubt
his sanity; much less his sincerity.
There was little I could find to say.

“Well,” I ventured at length, “what
do you intend to do about it?”

“I wish I knew . . .” he said slowly:
then after a pause: “One thing is cer-
tain: that I must get away from this
place — for a while at least: my nerves,
I fear, are giving way . . .”

That afternoon found me again in
the library, more than ever determined
to solve the mystery of that elusive in-
scription; again I followed my investi-
gations far into the night.

Late in the morning of the follow-
ing day my host, whom I had not seen
since breakfast, burst into the library
in a perfect frenzy of agitation.

“The head ” he jerked out, “it’s

gone — disappeared — vanished into thin
air!”

Stupefied, I met his wild gaze.

19

“Gone?” I echoed vaguely. “Gone
did you say?”

“Yes, man, yes — don’t you under-
stand? It’s vanished.”

Almost distracted he sank into a
chair. After a while, in response to my
earnest entreaties, he grew calmer. At
least, I suggested, one might reasonably
expect a little peace of mind now that
the detestable thing was no longer in
the house.

My words were strangely prophetic;
in the days that followed nothing
further of a mysterious nature hap-
pened in the house of Michael Roone.
It was as though a great cloud had been
lifted for ever; and there was quiet and
peacefulness again.

Soon afterwards I returned home:
but I thought it not altogether wise to
inform my host that I had eventually
arrived at an interpretation of the
legend on the lid of that unholy
mummy-case: it ran, if I remember
rightly, after this fashion:

“Disturb not the tomb of Ekillon:
for whosoever shall gaze for long upon
the head of the evil one shall be visited
with all manner of persecution and
fear; neither shall there be peace nor
rest in his house until once more this
head is underground.”

And as for the peculiar disappear-
ance of the hideous thing, it remains
to this day, for all I know, in the garden
where I buried it that same night

Hoodoo on the “Lady Grace”

The Way of Men in Ships

by FRANK BRONSTORPH

A LL set, skipper?” asked the pilot,
blithely.

^-“Except for yourself,” growled
the skipper, turning to watch operations
on the foc’s’le head. It was deserted,
and Captain Bliss cursed under his
breath. “What the hell’s the matter,
Mr. Brown?” he snapped.

“Man short, sir; the last man we
signed on didn’t like the smell of the
ship and took French leave.”

Captain Bliss -snorted and spat dis-
gustedly on to the pier-head. Two tug-
boats lay close by awaiting the hawser
from the Lady Grace. A dozen men
under the second mate were securing
the hatch fastenings, and a couple of
stokers off watch lounged on the raffs
and cast longing looks in the direction
of Montreal. Simultaneously the sirens
of the waiting tugs let out a bellow of
impatience.

“We’ve got to get a man pronto, Mr.
Brown,” said the skipper. Mr. Brown
understood that only too well; the ship
was under-manned, anyhow.

“Now, where in the name of Hades
does the Old Man expect me to find a
hand?” Brown glanced angrily up and
down the wharf side; some stray
Lascar or ruffian was all he could ex-
pect. “Damn the Old Man and blast
the Lady Grace."

“Man short, sir? I’d like the berth,”
came a quiet voice behind him. Brown
turned swiftly. The speaker had a
duffle-bag over his shoulder and a cloth
cap on his head. His broad frame was
covered by an old blue suit that was
shiny and threadbare and seemed to
have been slept in for years. His shoes
— or the remains of them — were a mix-
ture of patches and splices and cunning
knots which only an old wind-bag sailor
could have put together.

There was tribulation in his face,
but a determined spark gleamed in his
blue eyes under grey brows. Brown
felt instinctively that the man who
stood before him had known blue water
and its dangers, and something of the
sea’s deep mystery clung to him; but

the man was old.
gaff?

His cloth cap was off now; the hand
touching his forelock trembled a little.

“Will you take me, sir?” he almost
pleaded.

“What’s your name?” Bliss barked
from the bridge.

“BUI Evans, sir.” The man spoke a
little defiantly.

“What was your last ship?”

Bill Evans hesitated for a long
moment. “The Newshotm, sir.”

Captain Bliss whistled and the men
working on the hatches stopped and re-
garded Bill with interest. A murmur
rose from them.

“But the Newsholm was lost with all
hands six months ago,” said the skipper.

Old Bill threw back his head and
seemed to grow younger and broader
and more mysterious.

“I was the only man saved, sir.” It
came out softly, like the whisper of
ripples against the ship’s side.

Captain Bliss regarded him with new
interest.

“Sign him on, Mr. Brown,” he said
curtly.

“Old Bill’s got a hoodoo, skipper,”
yelled one of the men working on the
hatches.

“He don’t go wid us.”

A roar of approval went up from the
crowd.

“I don’t sail wid dat guy,” shouted
Adal the Finn, making a dash for the
Jacob’s ladder. Mr. Brown thrust out
a foot and tripped him up. Adal rolled
over into the scuppers, struck his head
and lay still.

“Quartermaster, haul up that ladder,”
roared the skipper. The quartermaster
and two hands jumped to obey. As he
glanced down at the sullen faces below
him, the skipper’s anger rose. This
hoodoo business was all stuff and non-
sense, the gossip of saloons when the
whisky went in and the sense went out.
Every man had a right to earn a living,
and salt water had a way of washing
off bad luck, if there was such a thing.

21

His foghorn voice drowned the growls
below.

“Sign him on, Mr. Brown,” he re-
peated, “and if I hear any more of this
damned hoodoo business on this ship,
I’ll put the whole lot of you in irons.
Blast me if I don’t.”

THE JINX

The Lady Grace was
making her twelve knots
with the current. Over-
head the stars shone bril-
liantly; near the river-
bank wisps of mist lurked
on the flats. Old Bill
found an empty bunk in
the fo’c’sle and crept in. The rhythmic
motion of the ship lulled his senses. He
slept.

A deep, despairing cry rang through
the fo’c’sle. There was a hoarse chorus
of complaint from tired bodies. The
cry rang out again, louder, piercingly,
grew into a thin shriek like the wail of
a lost soul. It seemed to come directly
from below Old Bill’s bunk. Leaning
over, Old Bill looked down into two
great luminous eyes, and again the eerie
cry rang through the fo’c’sle.

A volley of oaths and missiles poured
out of the bunks. The cat shed the
missiles as a duck sheds rain-drops,
howled again, dismally, ominously, and
walked out.

“Vat did I tell you boys?” Adal
yelled triumphantly. “Dat Jinx come
to look for Bill.”

“Begorra, it was a damned banshee,”
quavered Dublin, the Irishman.

“It was a cat, and cats is good,”
Hans purred in the darkness.

“Black cats for luck, but ginger cats
is hell,” a Yankee voice commented.

The men jabbered together excitedly,
till a stentorian voice called the watch
below on deck.

On the fo’c’sle head, Old Bill saw the
lights of a large town on the port bow
and beyond them the starboard light of

HOODOO ON THE LADY GRACE
Could he stand the

32

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

a ship moved southwards into the main
stream.

“Bridge ahoy,” Old Bill hailed. “Ship
on the port bow."

“Aye, aye,” came the helmsman’s
reply.

There was time enough and room
enough to clear her, and already the
Lady Grace began to turn to star-
board. Suddenly the turning motion
stopped. For a long minute she held
on her course, and then, as if gather-
ing herself for a leap, hurled herself
straight at the ship abeam.

Old Bill realised with dismay that
the steering gear had stuck. Aghast he
clutched the rail and watched fascin-
ated. Behind him came the sound of
the engine-room telegraph jangling
furiously. The siren roared a hoarse
warning and the Lady Grace quivered
from stem to stern as the screws raced
backward. The watch below tumbled
on deck and huddled together half
dazed around the foremast. A babble
of excited voices rent the air.

The space between the ships grew
rapidly smaller. To Old Bill it seemed
that a collision was inevitable, and that
he had merely escaped drowning on the
Newsholm to be crushed to death on
the Lady Grace. Perhaps after all,
Adal was right, and there was a damned
hoodoo on him, determined to work its
worst.

The seconds dragged by like aeons.
The ships seemed to touch. Old Bill
held his breath waiting for that sicken-
ing jar. It did not come: the ship
abeam had evaded the prow of the
Lady Grace by a few scant inches. A
volley of stirring salt oaths roared out
from the other vessel.

Adal’s high-pitched voice broke the
silence of the Lady Grace. “De damned
jinx is goin’ to get us, boys.”

“Maybe, blimeby in the sea it go
away,” Hans’s voice trembled.

“It will go away wid us to Davy
Jones locker, begorra,” roared Dublin.

“Hell,” said Yank. “Wasn’t I a
sucker to sail on this ship?”

THE FIRE

Muffled to
his ears,
Bliss paced
the bridge,
and sniffed
the weather.
In the twi-
light the
bleak coast
of Labrador
loomed
rugged and inhospitable as the Lady
Grace headed towards the straits of
Belle Isle. The current from the straits
had already reduced the ship’s speed a
couple of knots and was driving against
them harder than ever. Bliss roared
down the speaking-tube to the engine-
room.

McGregor, the chief engineer,
answered in person.

“I am giving you all I can, skipper,
but the blasted mine sweepings the
owners filled the bunkers with won't
steam "

The grumbling voice died out sud-
denly. Bliss roared into the speaking-
tube again. There was no reply, and
above the hum of the machinery there
came to him an ominous sound.

“McGregor, McGregor, are you
there?” he shouted.

There was no reply; the revolutions
of the engine began to fall off, the ship
was stopping. Suddenly, out of the
ventilators behind the bridge, dense
clouds of black smoke poured, and
Bliss realised that the stokehold was on
fire. Like a flash his right hand seized
the lanyard of the siren and its hoarse
note of alarm brought all hands on
deck.

“Get a line of hose down the engine-
room pronto, Mr. Brown,” the skipper
roared. Already Old Bill was uncoiling
the hose. Willing hands went to his
assistance. The engines had stopped
and the ship was no longer under way.
Smoke from the ventilators poured into
the faces of the men, made their eyes

HOODOO ON THE LADY GRACE

smart and their lungs protest in splut-
tering coughs.

To Bliss, the men struggling in the
smoke-murk below, seemed like so
many spirits from the nether regions
busy with incantations, and the words
“Old Bill’s got a hoodoo, skipper,”
came back to him with cumulative
force. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so pig-
headed about Old Bill-

The hose filled out with the pressure
of the water inside as the hydrant was
turned on. Slowly, very slowly the
black smoke ceased, and out of the
stokehold came a grimy company of
men, choking, gasping, to fill their lungs
with life-giving air. They cast dark
looks at Old Bill. It was his dastardly
work. The damned hoodoo that had
wrecked the Newsholm had followed
him here, bent on their own destruction.

“What the hell were you doing be-
low, Mac?” the skipper asked.

“A heap of rubbish in the stokehold
which the damned trimmers were too
lazy to throw overboard caught fire,”
McGregor replied, turning and making
his way towards the engine-room.
“They won’t do it again,” he continued
grimly as he disappeared down a com-
panionway.

Old Bill, standing in the shelter of
a ventilator, watched the deck hands
move towards the fo’c’sle. Dublin,
passing by, greeted him qaustically.

“Hide, ye spalpeen, hide, but Auld
Nick will come by his own yet.”

THE DERELICT

Peering through the murk of the
night at a faint star high over the
horizon, Captain Bliss heaved a sigh of

content. The ship was clear of the
straits of Belle Isle at last, and blue
water lay ahead. He turned into the
chart-room and examined the course he
had set. Satisfied, he went out and had
a squint at the compass. The ship was
well on her course.

The man at the wheel held it in a
peculiar way, the way the old wind-bag
sailors steered when they expected the
ship to buck and the helm to kick. Cap-
tain Bliss recognised Old Bill.

“I hope your hoodoo is gone back to
land, Evans,” he said quietly.

“There ain’t no sich animal, sir,” Old
Bill said stoutly, and the skipper
smiled. The Lady Grace rolled over to
starboard; Old Bill gave her a spoke
and brought her back to the course.
Bliss nodded and turned away.

The door of the chart-room opened
and Sparks came out with a paper in
his hands.

“Derelict reported, skipper,” he said.

Bliss felt an icy chill run down his
spine. They went into the chart-room
together, and he read the message re-
porting a derelict north of Belle Isle
straits and advising all ships using the
passage to proceed with caution. Pie
checked the ship’s latitude and longi-
tude on the chart and marked with an
X the reported position of the derelict.
There was plenty of room between it
and the ship’s course, even allowing for
the current, which was making a couple
of knots in a southerly direction.

Satisfied, he was about to get out of
his chair when he noticed that the
derelict had been first reported at eight
a.m. It was now past midnight. The
derelict was much closer than he had
thought.

With a leap Bliss was out of the
chart-room and rang the engine-room
telegraph to “slow.”

“Hard to starboard,” he barked at
Old BUI.

“Aye, aye, sir.” The wheel went
hard over and the Lady Grace turned
effortlessly out of her course like a giant
whale avoiding the frenzied rush of an

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

adversary. In his heart Old Bill re-
joiced. The Old Man was smart; the
derelict wasn’t going to catch him.

“Keep her south, dead south,” Bliss
ordered.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Bliss walked over to the engine-room
telegraph and his hand reached out for
the lever to call for more speed. He
never moved it. The Lady Grace stag-
gered as a boxer staggers from the im-
pact of a devastating blow, and a
sickening shudder ran through her
from stem to stern. Then she swung
violently round to port, shook herself
wearily, wallowed and rode free. She
had struck the derelict.

Bliss stared into space, every sense
numb. After an agony of waiting,
McGregor’s voice seemed to come from
an infinity of distance.

“What’s the damage, Mac?” he
asked, scarcely breathing.

“Port propeller carried away, and
may be a plate or two dented.”

“What can you do about it?”

“We have a spare propeller on deck,
but we can’t change it here.”

“What speed can you make now?”

“About seven knots.”

“Very good. We’ll make for St.
John’s, Nova Scotia, and put on the
spare.”

Bliss walked into the chart-room
with a melancholy air and set the
course for St. John’s. Brown peered
over his shoulder as he pricked the
chart.

“There is a damned hoodoo on this
ship,” Brown muttered under his
breath.

“You are a damned fool,” Bliss
roared, letting the dividers fall on the
chart.

“All I’ve heard from yourself and the
damned trash in the fo’c’sle since the
voyage began is hoodoo, hoodoo, hoo-
doo. You have plastered the sea and
the sky with hoodoo. You eat and
drink hoodoo; you go to bed with it at
night and drag it out bright and fresh
in the morning and parade it on deck.

Blast me if you are not all fit for a
lunatic asylum.” His face grew red
and the great veins at the sides of his
neck swelled in anger. “Get out and
give the helmsman the course," he flung
finally at Brown.

Brown hung his head and went out.
Bliss turned back to his chart, and
Brown watched the helmsman bring the
Lady Grace round to the new course.
Bliss was talking to himself, still in
anger.

“The damned land-lubbers and bar-
nacles, to broadcast the wrong position
of a derelict to sink my ship and ruin
me. 'That’s your damned hoodoo, Mr.
Brown ”

MUTINY

The propel-
ler had been
changed at last,
and below the
engineers were
putting on the
finishing
touches. Bliss
walked the
bridge deck
i m p a tiently,
like a caged lion. Beyond the entrance
to Harbour Grace, he could see the high
combers, and above them flying clouds,
surging like charging horses across the
sky.

There was a north-east gale making
up outside. He reached for the speaking-
tube, and for the tenth time that morn-
ing called his chief engineer.

“All set now, Mac?” he asked.

“Not quite, skipper; in another hour
perhaps.”

A man came out of the fo’c’sle
hurriedly and looked apprehensively
around. The skipper recognised Old
Bill. Next moment Old Bill was
scuttling aft and the fo’c’sle erupted
in a spate of angry seamen behind him,
Dublin in the lead.

“What the hell do you mean by
this?” Bliss roared.

HOODOO ON THE LADY GRACE

The crew came to a halt near the
companionway to the deck.

“If Old Bill don’t quit this ship now,
sor, we quit," Dublin shouted. His blue
eyes blazed and his red hair falling over
his forehead gave him a wild and
sinister appearance. “We can’t stand
this hoodoo any more, sor." Dublin’s
voice was desperate.

So the hoodoo was at work again.
Bliss waited.

“Every night we hear them in the
fo’c’sle— Williams an’ Murphy an’
Dago Joe that drowned in the News-
holm a-calling to Old Bill — all night,
calling an’ calling an’ callin’. Old Bill
can go wid them, sir, but we ain’t.”

“You are a damned pack of liars,"
Bliss roared. “Get back forrard and
don’t let me hear any more of this non-
sense."

“You are a damned pig-headed jack-
ass,” Dublin retorted. “You an’ Old
Bill can go to hell together, but we
ain’t.” He turned to the crowd. “Come
on, mates, get your dunnage. Goin’
ashore we be.”

They swarmed down into the fo’c’sle
and were soon back with their belong-
ings. Argument was useless. An in-
sensate fear clutched at their hearts,
lent speed to their actions. Bliss
stepped into his quarters for his auto-
matic.

A swift rush carried the men up the
companionway, along the main deck
and up to the boat deck. Eager hands
were stripping the canvas covers from
one of the life-boats, loosing the falls
and swinging the life-boat out.

“Avast there,” Bliss roared again,
pistol in hand, a grim look on his
weather-beaten face.

“Don’t listen to his braying, mates,”
Dublin shouted. “Let’s get away.”

Bliss raised his pistol and fired over
the heads of the njen clustered around
the boat. The shot whined viciously
overhead and the men hesitated, but
Dublin egged them on.

JS

“Better get shot than fight the
damned hoodoo, mates. Get busy."

The men hung back. Dublin swung
himself into the boat and worked
swiftly at the remainder of the canvas
covering. Bliss’s pistol spat again. The
bullet struck the rope of the forward
tackle. The boat rocked slightly. Sud-
denly the rope parted and the forward
end of the life-boat pitched seawards,
catapulting Dublin into the water.

Struggling and spluttering, he struck
out with difficulty. Old Bill heaved a
life-belt adroitly over his shoulders.
Then the after tackle parted, the life-
boat dropped with a crash into the sea
and floated bottom upwards.

A howl of despair went up from the
men. Baffled and beaten, they stood
listlessly watching Dublin and the boat
drift away.

“Get forrard,” Bliss roared, raising
his pistol again. For a second they
hesitated, then with one accord they
began to shuffle back the way they had
come, swearing obscenely.

STORM AND FOG

The Lady
Grace was out
in the open
sea again. The
life-boat,
properly
secured, swung
at its davits;
Dublin lay in
the brig,

groaning in irons.

The fo’c’sle was as cheerful as a
tomb. The men spoke in surly whis-
pers, airsing Old Bill and the skipper.
Outside, the wind was rising, the ship
pitched and tossed, buffeting the seas,
complaining in every rivet and joint
Old Bill rested quietly in his bunk, his
senses alert, listening intently to the
raging waters and the sullen talk of the
men, which reached him fitfully be-

26 GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

tween the shrieking gusts of the wind.

Suddenly the electric light went out
and a heaving, tumbling blackness filled
the fo’c’sle.

“Yes, give him the works and finish
the damned hoodoo for keeps.” The
words came distinctly to Old Bill. He
acted quickly, switching his head to
where his feet had been and drawing
up his feet as far as possible.

A heavy object crashed down on the
bunk. Old Bill made no sound, but
slowly stretching out his hand he
grasped the object. It was a short bar
of iron, which would certainly have
cracked his skull if it had landed. An
excited whispering broke out in the con-
cealing darkness. The sounds of move-
ment drew dose. Someone was leaning
over his bunk. He threw himself
to~ether and lunged forward the bar of
iron in his right hand.

He felt the jar of its connection with
a human body and a shriek of agony
rose above the howling of the wind and
the complaining of the ship. Swiftly
Old Bill charged into Dublin’s bunk aft
of his own.

Morning found the Lady Grace still
buffeted by mountainous seas. There
was no wind and the sky was dark and
ominous. Leaning over the port rail
Old Bill sniffed the weather. Wild it
was, and foreboding, and a still
small voice kept saying to him: “Keep
a sound eye to windward, beware
Cape Stiff weather.” But Cape Stiff
lay several thousand miles to the
south.

At noon the sun came out, and the
sea moderated. It grew almost calm,
save for the long rolling swells, and the
Lady Grace ploughed steadily on. A
long-winged sea bird hove in sight.
“Albatross,” thought Old Bill, and the
familiar scenes of the Southern Ocean
rose before him again; but it was only
a lonely gannet flying sluggishly west-
ward. Old Bill shook his head de-
jectedly, grew restless and moody, and
began to tramp the deck, casting

anxious and hurried glances at the
ocean. The men eyed him queerly,
tapped their heads significantly and
sniggered; the hoodoo had got him at
last.

Suddenly a dark fog-bank swept out
of the sea like the creation of some
malevolent spirit, and wrapped its
swiftly billowing folds around the Lady
Grace. From the bridge everything was
blotted out except the vague outline of
the bridge itself, across which Captain
Bliss paced restively, his keen gaze
seeking to pierce the obscuring mist.
He rang the engine-room telegraph to
half-speed while the foghorn roared
raucously.

“What do you make of it, Mr.
Brown?” he asked.

“Never seen anything so sudden and
so thick, sir.”

Bliss nodded moodily and continued
his pacing. The startling descent of the
fog-bank was certainly disconcerting.
Hard on the port bow a fog-horn bel-
lowed and the Lady Grace flung back
the challenge. Bliss dashed to the
engine-room telegraph and rang for full
speed astern. The ship quivered as the
screws reversed. Seizing the port rails
of the bridge he peered anxiously out
at the billowing vapour.

“Damn the fog,” he growled despair-
ingly.

A huge, swiftly moving object loomed
suddenly out of the fog and dashed
madly past within a biscuit toss of the
Captain. Bliss wiped the perspiration
from his forehead with an unsteady
hand. A full minute went by before he
moved the handle of the engine-room
telegraph to ahead.

Huddled together abaft the fo’c’sle
deck the men groaned and Adal’s
high-pitched voice quavered abjectly.

“Dis is de end now. Jinx is goin’ to
make an end of everybody.” He hung
limply on to a ventilator, and the fog
threw back his sobs in a mocking
monotone.

HOODOO ON THE LADY GRACE

THE ICEBERG

The Lady
Grace went on
slowly, uncer-
tainly, foghorn
roaring. The
men shifted
uneasily along
the rails,
squinting a t
the fog as if
preparing to
leap into it
Old Bill stood
apart, head up, breathing in the fog as
a stag s niffs the wind when instinct
warns him of the presence of the
hunter. There was in the air a faint,
vaguely familiar smell that filled him
with uneasiness. He had smelt it be-
fore, but where, where? He went
quickly down the lanes of his memory,
searching for the land-mark that would
give him the answer.

The smell grew stronger. He walked
across the deck and inhaled deeply. It
was a smell of frozen air and earth, that
sent a tingle along the base of his scalp
and a queer feeling into the pit of his
stomach. He peered frantically over
the rail; there was nothing to be seen
but the grey fog, billowing in eerie folds
around the ship.

But there was no mistaking the smell
now. It filled his lungs and whispered
into his soul the dangers that lay ahead
of them.

*7

“Bridge ahoy,” Old Bill roared. “Ice-
berg ahead.”

“Where away?” Bliss asked.

“On the port bow, sir.”

The engine-room telegraph jangled
and the Lady Grace came to a stop. A
light north wind rippled the surface of
the sea, whipping away the upper strata
of fog.

Dead ahead, a scant cable’s length
away, a huge iceberg lay silently upon
the ocean. The setting sun tipped its
upper ridges in orange and gold. Above
the water-line the whole mass gleamed
like the fangs of a hungry wolf. The
men looked incredulously at the berg
and wonderingly at Old Bill.

“Ach, we was all wrong.” Hans's
voice answered their thoughts. “Old
Bill is one damned good -sailor-man
Dere ain’t no hoodoo on him.”

“You said it, buddy.” Yank’s matter-
of-fact voice was cheering.

The men clustered around Old Bill,
chaffing him playfully, slapping him on
the back.

The Lady Grace circled the berg
swiftly to the south. The seas danced
merrily ahead in the last rays of the
sunlight, which seemed to flood the ship
with warmth and friendliness.

“A tot of grog for all hands, bosun,”
ordered Captain Bliss.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Aye, aye,” roared the men in
unison; and Old Bill felt that it was
good to be alive and homeward bound
once more with a friendly crowd of
sailormen.

Far Too Conventional

The Stranger Dares the Haunted House

by FRANK CLEMENTS

T HE stranger laughed. “I sup-
pose you are all trying to pull
my leg,” he said.

“You can think that if you like, sir,”
muttered the landlord, and the others
in the bar murmured assent.

“But really the whole thing is so . . .
so conventional. It’s a stock property
story: a house that has been empty for
years, sudden deaths, some local legend,
and then a mysterious creature whose
touch is fatal. Come on, now. You
ought to be able to invent a better
ghost than that. It’s hopelessly old-
fashioned.”

“So are ghosts,” remarked the old
gentleman, who, till then, had taken no
part in the conversation.

The stranger turned. “Do you really
believe this as well, sir?” he asked, a
slightly mocking glint in his eyes.

“I don’t disbelieve it, just because it
has all the conventional ingredients of
a ghost story. After all, how did such
things become conventional?”

“Because they are so obviously
frightening, I suppose.”

“Rather because they are the circum-
stances in which ghosts have always
been seen. The description of a man
dying with a bullet in his brain would
be conventional, wouldn’t it? Because
men shot in the head die quite conven-
tionally. In the same way, ghosts
generally appear in the same surround-
ings.”

“But have there really been deaths
in that old house?”

“Since I retired and settled here —
twenty years ago — there have been two.
Tramps, both of them. It was a long
time before their bodies were dis-
covered, and no longer possible to state
the exact cause of death.”

“A long time before their bodies were
discovered?”

“No one in the village visits the
house. It was the dogs which drew
attention to them.”

“That’s right,” interrupted the land-
lord. “And there may be a corpse
there, for all we know. No one wants
to look.”

29

FAR TOO CONVENTIONAL

Involuntarily, the stranger shud-
dered:

“Brr, what a horrible idea!”

“It’s a horrible house,” sighed the old
gentleman.

The stranger drained his glass and
nodded to the landlord as a sign that he
should take the company’s orders.

“Well, what’s the ghost supposed to
be like? Rattling bones and all that?”

The gentleman shook his head
gravely. “No one has described it, for
the simple reason that the only two who
may have seen it recently — the tramps
— both died.”

“Isn’t there some sort of traditional
description?”

“As the landlord said, there is the
old legend of some . . . hairy bestial
presence.”

“Just as I thought — so vague that
it’s obviously imagined.”

Again the old gentleman disagreed:

“On the contrary, when people
imagine things, they usually invent de-
tailed descriptions.”

The stranger pursed his lips and
shrugged:

“All the same, I’m afraid it all seems
ridiculous.”

“Would you like to go there, sir?”
asked the landlord jokingly, as he
placed full glasses on the table before
them.

The stranger looked round the bar
with its taciturn country occupants,
while his lips curled with the towns-
man’s contempt for the yokel:

“Yes, I would. I’ll go now, if there’s
one of you not afraid to show me the
way.”

The old gentleman raised his hand:

“Now, please, don’t do anything
foolish.”

“I’m not foolish,” declared the
stranger, a little flushed with the un-
usually strong beer, and conscious that
he was the centre of attraction. “But
all this talk is. Who’s going to show
me the way?”

There was silence in the bar.

He laughed again, this time un-

pleasantly and with a jeering joke:

“Well, they say some things about
you country bumpkins in town, but this
is the limit. I’ll have a fine story to tell
when I get back.”

At this there was a mutter, and a
scowling young labourer stepped for-
ward.

“All right, mister. If you wants to be
smart, I’ll show ’ee the way.”

“Brave fellow,” sneered the stranger,
rising from the table. “We won’t waste
any time. I’ll stay till twelve — that’s
the fatal hour, isn’t it? I’d spend the
night, there, only I must be moving on
to-morrow and want a good sleep.”

He buttoned on his coat and drew a
flask from his pocket.

“Fill this up, please, landlord. It’ll
be cold there, I expect.”

“Aye, very cold,” confirmed a voice.

The old gentleman protested once
more:

“If nothing happens while you’re
there, it also proves nothing. These
stories are not made or unmade in one
night. Whereas if . .

“There you are, sir,” chuckled the
stranger. “ ‘If nothing happens.’ You
know that nothing will.”

He took the flask from the landlord:

“Do you want me to pay the reckon-
ing before I go?” he asked tauntingly.

The landlord hesitated a moment,
and then replied:

“I do, sir.”

His face was grim and unsmiling, so
that the stranger felt vaguely disturbed
in spite of himself. But he drew out a
note and slapped it on to the counter:

“Good, leave the change. I’ll be back
for it.”

ON HIS WAY

With a challenging glance around
him, he followed the labourer outside.
The old gentleman rose and hurried
after them.

“So you insist on going? Very well,
you know what I think. We pass my
cottage on your way. I’ll give you a
lantern.”

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

30

“Thank you, sir,” said the stranger,
genuinely grateful, for the evening
air had already chilled some of ms
zest.

“And I’d like you to take my dog.
He’ll be company for you, and not only
that, animals have a very keen sense
of the supernatural. Watch him
closely. If he shows any alarm, leave
the house at once. You’ll promise me
that?”

The stranger promised while the
labourer grunted. They waited outside
the cottage, which was on the fringe of
the village, while the old gentleman
went inside.

“Why don’t you come with me?”
asked the stranger. “You’d have a fine
laugh over the others afterwards.”

“Not me,” refused the labourer
shortly, and turned away.

After a few minutes, the old gentle-
man returned with an old lantern and a
shaggy Airedale, who sniffed at the
stranger with friendly curiosity.

“His name’s Robber,” said the old
gentleman. “Don’t forget what you
promised me.”

When they reached the entrance to
the short gravel drive that led between
two rows of elms to the house, the
labourer halted.

“This is as far as I come. Please
yourself what you do.”

With a wave of his hand, the stranger
walked briskly up the drive. Standing
beneath the porch, he hesitated before
he pushed open the door. The village
seemed far away, for its lights were
hidden by the trees, and he felt very
lonely.

At that moment it would have been
very easy to retrace his steps, but the
thought of the grins on the broad coun-
try faces restrained him. Then the dog
pushed his wet nose gently against his
hand, as if the beast also cherished the
awareness of another living presence.

The touch gave him confidence and
he fondled the dog’s ear, before, with
an unconsciously defiant swagger, he
flung open the door. Little was re-

vealed by the faint rays of the lantern.

He suddenly remembered the land-
lord’s words:

“And there may be a corpse there
now, for all we know.”

“Indeed, there might be anything
outside the small circle of life within
the glimmering light cast by the lamp on
to the dusty floor and murky walls of
an abandoned corridor. The dog
yawned with a forced creaking sound
which set his skin tingling, so that he
muttered anxiously:

“Quiet Robber, quiet 1”

He left the front door wide open
behind him. In three paces he could
be outside in the open air, so different
from the musty chill in the house.
Immediately on his left, there was a
room.' He entered, leaving this door
also open.

Some while passed before he made
any effort to explore the room, but as
his imagination set to work, the need
to do so in order to quieten his nerves
overcame his repugnance. He moved
slowly, holding the lantern first high
above his head and then close to the
floor before he shifted position.

In circling the room he encountered
no obstacles or furniture. He sat on
the window seat. Outside the trees
hovered in the gloom, but there came
no sound of their rustling.

CROUCHING MONSTER

He strove in
vain to control
his thoughts, to
direct them to
calm or amusing
matters. But
whenever he re-
called any
humorous story, it would fade un-
wittingly from his mind, and some
horrible one would come forward per-
sistently to demand his attention. One
story grew particularly vivid in his
fancy. It told of a crouching monster

FAR TOO CONVENTIONAL

with yellow eyes, which sprang upon its
victims through closed windows.

Looking nervously over his shoulder,
he saw the branches of the trees sway-
ing as with a life of their own, and they
took on threatening shapes as he
watched them. Soon, the influence of
the story became so strong that he was
afraid to look through the window, yet
also terrified to turn his back on it, for
fear of what might approach from be-
hind. He sat awkwardly in profile, till
the strained position drove him to leap
up suddenly and rush across the room.

Here, he could hear the rustling of
the trees, and that fixed his attention
while his ears strained for any break
in the normal rhythm of sound. He
heard the deep breathing of the dog,
who had fallen asleep, his nose buried
between his paws. A sharp pressure
on his hip recalled the presence of the
flask. Gratefully, he withdrew it from
his pocket.

The whisky brought him confidence
and his old bravado. The dog slept so
peacefully and unalarmed that he re-
solved to explore the house. He did
not take the lantern with him. Ever
since his childhood he had trained him-
self to see in the dark, also his fear
of the dark had been lessened if he had
a lit room to make for; that had always
been of more importance than carrying
a light himself.

His stumbles were frequent, mainly
because his mood led him to advance
with a deliberately blundering reck-
lessness, for the sounds of his own pro-
gress reassured his latently tense
nerves. He came upon nothing of
interest, and was about to return to
the room below, when he heard rapid
pattering footsteps along the corridor.
Obviously, the noise had disturbed the
dog.

He whispered: “Robber, Robber!”
and the gentle patter approached to his
side. It was too dark for him to make
out the Airedale’s form, but he stroked
the beast, whose ragged coat was quite
dank, revealing to him how unhealthy
was the atmosphere of the house. He
felt sorry for Robber and caressed him
soothingly.

Although it was not yet twelve, he
resolved to put an end to the nonsense
and return to the inn. He heard the
scratching and pattering follow him
downstairs; the animal was faithfully
at his heels, giving warmth and comfort
by his presence.

But when he reached the room, he
halted, and his mouth opened for the
cry he could not utter. It was as if his
heart stopped with the sudden shock,
and his body tingled with horror.
There, in the light of the lantern, still
sleeping soundly, lay the dog. . . .

Honest John

Whdt the Lightning Suggested and the Dawn
Revea led

by J. MOFFAT

J OHN NISBET founded the Nisbet
Mills, at Milton, under the name of
John Nisbet & Son, in 1787. He
determined to be honest in all his deal-
ings, and he kept his word. He cer-
tainly f 0und that ^ prover5

Honesty is the best policy,” was a true
one, for though he started with a small
capital he died in 1812, at the age of
sixty a rich man, and the owner of a
small estate outside the town where he
had first seen the light of day in a
cottage.

A year or two before his death he
bmlt a mausoleum, and there he was
laid to rest. His wife followed hint two
years later.

He was a keen business man, a hard
man, perhaps, but an honest man, and
such was his reputation that for years
before his death even the “bucks” of
that day spoke of him with respect as
Honest John.” But human nature can
never be perfect, and the “Adam” in
Nisbet showed itself in his conceit in
his honesty. He delighted in his
soubriquet, and as he lay dying he
grasped his only son by the arm in a
vice-like grip, and said to him in a
voice hoarsened by approaching death-
If ye do not deal honestly with men
as I have done, I shall seek your
answer from my grave.”

Now this son William, so tradition

has it, did not deal honestly with his
brother men, nor with his patrimony.
He ill-treated and under-paid his work-
people His mother’s death so soon
after that of her husband was said to
be a result of his behaviour. Moreover
he mortgaged the estate to a money-
lender, and he narrowly escaped the
gallows for forgery.

One morning after a night of thunder
and lightning, he was found dead just
outside the burial-place of his father,
and local gossip, embittered by a
scoundrel’s treatment, did not require
the tinker’s story of having seen
Honest John walking that wild night,
S- ,f tat f emphatically that William
Nisbef had been made t0 answer his
father for his misdeeds.

His son John Nisbet succeeded him.
He might have been nicknamed
Prudent John, ’ but he gained no such
distinction. He was honest to all men

Xt, Set v h i“? elf t0 undo the harm his
lather had done, and he succeeded. The
estate was freed from debt. The mills
prospered, and his aid was sought by
the two political parties of the country
He was, however, a reserved man
“°. dld ° ot se ek the publicity of
politics. His ways were simple, but the
neighbours were surprised one morning
to learn that he had married his house-
keeper. He was old when he married,

HONEST JOHN

but, like a certain patriarch, he was
given a son in his old age. This son he
named William Nisbet, and William
Nisbet succeeded his father in his early
twenties.

William had quite a lot of his great-
grandfather in him. He was, however,
ambitious. He loved money. He loved
power. He invested judicially, became
a director of many firms and a leading
financier. Eventually, he became Sir
William Nisbet and married a peer’s
daughter.

And so we find him, a widower,
aged fifty-six, childless, sitting after
dinner in a smoking-room of tire new
mansion he had built on his great-
grandfather’s estate, on an August night
about n.30, the servants in their
quarters, having been dismissed for the
night — a lonely man.

There were heavy lines beneath Sir
William’s eyes, and a troubled look on
his face, as he stared out across the
fields that were his, lying white in the
moonlight. Several times he clenched
his hands, and sat alert in his chair, as
if some sudden thought had opened a
golden pathway leading away from his
troubles. But his hands suddenly un-
clenched, and back he sank into his
chair.

The crash was coming. He knew
that. So did his friends. That was why
he was alone in his mansion bouse. He
smiled bitterly to himself when he
thought of his friends, recalling the
many words of flattery, the many
house-parties he had given, the many
he had attended, the many loans he had
made, the valuable advice he had given.

He recalled his treatment at the
hands of his .friends these last months.
There were the Castley brothers. He
had helped them to wealth and a title
for the elder brother. There was Lord
Levald, whose estate he had saved from
going into the market. There was
Reubens, whose crazy schemes he had
turned into money-making ones. Where
were they now in his hour of need?

He laughed, and started at the sound

33

of his laughter. It seemed to echo in
the quiet room. He sprang up from his
chair and hastily poured himself a glass
of port, which he hurriedly drank, and
then he sat down again, but he put the
decanter within easy reach, and a
minute or two later he gulped down
another glass of port, and then another.
In a short time he told himself that he
was better. He was thinking more
clearly, and the curious feeling in his
temples was passing.

He would not give in. No, he
was “Honest John’s” great-grandson,
“Honest John,” the old fighter who had
founded the family fortunes. No, he
would find a way out, an honest one,
surely, but a way out — he must find
a way out.

THE FLASH OF AN IDEA

He opened the windows just a little,
for the room had become very warm.
He noticed that the clouds had rolled
up and obscured the moon, and that
rain was falling, while in the distance
there was a faint rumbling.

He paused in the act of lighting a
cigar, a brand that Joyce had intro-
duced to him. Curse Joyce, but for him
and his infernal swindle he (Sir
William) would that night have been as
he was these long years, respected,
trusted, wealthy.

The cigar remained unlighted. Sir
William’s eyes narrowed and his hands
clenched once more. He stepped back
from the windows hurriedly as the
lightning flashed across the sky as quick
as a certain thought flashed across his
brain.

The mills! Why had he not thought
of the mills and their heavy insurance?
He was glad he had kept them to him-
self, having refused all offers to turn
them into a company. He had often
been tempted, but he had felt bound to
keep them in the family out of resoect
to his great-grandfather and his father.
Now they must go. He had no heir.

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

34

The insurance money would give him
that financial backing he so desperately
required.

It would be easy, too. He would take
the short cut across the fields to the
outskirts of the town where the mills
stood. The watchman would have re-
tired after his midnight tour of inspec-
tion. A few tins of petrol and the whole
place would be ablaze, and the fire
could be attributed to the storm. It
was so simple.

He looked at his keys, and ran his
fingers down one. It was the key that
admitted him. to the newer portion of
the building, where there was so much
woodwork. Sir William smiled. He was
saved.

His workpeople? The thought
crossed his mind. What would they do?
He would not rebuild — for a long time
at least. He helped himself again to
port. “A man’s first duty is to him-
self,” he muttered thickly, as he laid
down tire glass.

A water-proof over his dinner-suit
and a cap pulled down over his eyes, he
quietly let himself out of his house, as
quietly as if he were a thief. He walked
along the grass on his tiptoes, avoiding
the gravel path, but stopped ’in his step
as a brilliant flash of lightning lit up
the landscape. He looked around for a
minute or two, listening intently, but
there was no sound, and then came the
crash of thunder.

“I must hurry,” he muttered, and he
left the drive with its dark trees, and
clumsily got over a wire fence. The
storm was now at its height, and flash
succeeded flash, while the night moaned.

He started to walk quickly across the
field, and then he broke into a half-
run, as a feeling that he was being
pursued seized hold of him. He stopped
once and tried to shake it off, but the
blue forked tongue that split the sky
unnerved him, and he sprang off again,
his breath coming in heavy gasps.

“I must get it done quickly,” he told
himself, “very quickly.”

Then a slip on the wet grass and
down he crashed, all the breath
knocked out of his body. For a minute
or two he was dazed, but the lash of
rain on his upturned face revived him,
and he scrambled to his feet, and with-
out taking note of his direction, so far
as that was possible, he set off again.
But this time the throbbing in his
temples which had troubled him these
last days returned more violently than
ever.

Flash, and flicker and crash, and he
was running — no, walking, no, running
— making for somewhere. Ah, he was
to fire the mills for money. Then he
must get out of this dark field. He had
no idea that this field was so large. He
stopped suddenly. Where was he going?
He asked himself again. Anywhere out
of this accursed field. But this would
never do. He was running blindly, and
who or what was behind him, and who
called his name?

He was a fool. He had a job to do.
The mills must be fired. Would his
heart never stop that awful beating?
He was being hunted. It was foolish-
ness. It could not be. He had done
nothing — yet. Nobody knew. The
mills

Flash, flicker and crash. Then the
dark mass of masonry loomed out of
the intermittent darkness on his right.
He must get to the safety of one of the
mill buildings for a minute or two to
rest, and then the mills and money.
Another twenty yards

Flash and crash and blackness.

In the morning they found him lying
beside the lightning-shattered mauso-
leum of his father. “Honest John’s”
coffin had been violently thrown from
where it had so long rested. The old
wood had given way, and one skeleton
arm was lying, strangely enough, across
the dead Sir William’s body.

The Ghost House

To Which the Haunting Form Returned

by MAJOR B. WILMOT ALLISTONE

O Mary the house was an
obsession.

At night she dreamed of it —
dreamed that she wandered on the
close-dipped lawn that ran down from
it to the tranquil lily pond where moor-
hens floated among the white blooms,
preening their feathers and sending
occasional ripples across the still sur-
face as they dived beneath it — dreamed
that she walked down the strip of
crazy paving, where moss grew in the
cranks of the stones, between the
herbaceous beds of blue and white lark-
spur, lupin, hollyhock, peony and the
thousand perennials whose bright
colours blazed in the sunshine.

She dreamed that she stood on the
grassy edge of the pond, watching the
silvery streaks as the little fish darted
hither and thither over the sandy
bottom, and felt the soft turf beneath
her feet. She turned and looked at the
Tudor house with its dull red bricks
peeping here and there from the climb-
ing clematis, the dormer windows and
squat chimneys with their wisps of
bluish smoke rising lazily in the still
air.

She dreamed that she walked through
the French windows into the lounge,
with its chintz-covered chairs and
Chesterfield, water-colour paintings,
rosewood tables and casement-curtained
leaded lights, into the dining-room with
its low oak-beamed ceiling and artist’s
proof hunting scenes upon the walls,
up the narrow oak staircase to the rooms
above.

To Mary it was no dream, but a
vivid, happy reality, and always, when
she awoke, she turned to Jim with a
smile of contented peace. Jim yawned
and ran his fingers through the dark-
brown curls that covered the little head
on the pillow beside him.

He knew the cause of his wife’s
waking smile. He had listened so often
to the story of her night journeys and
her longing for the old house that he
had never seen, but knew, as well as
she, from her description.

“Been dreaming again, my sweet,”
said he, “tell me what you did this
time.”

“The same as always, Jim,” she
answered, linking her hands behind her
head and fixing dreamy eyes upon the

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

36

ceiling. "I start at the pond, watching
the birds, the fish and the lilies; gaze
at the old red walls, the creeper and the
gabled roof; walk across the lawn into
the house by the French windows;
climb the old oak stairs and every
minute of it is happy. I know every
inch of that house and love it. I know
every corner of the garden and, in my
dream, can smell the flowers. That is
strange, isn’t it, that one can smell in a
dream?”

“Very strange, my babe. It all
sounds rum to me. You only saw it
once, and you didn’t go inside, and yet
you know the garden and the house as
■well as if you lived there. But perhaps
it is not really as you see it inside, I ex-
pect that part is just the dream.”

Jim knew what the dream meant to
her. He knew that it made her happy
and helped her through the struggle of
poverty while he strove to make ends
meet with his small poultry farm.

Sometimes Jim dreamed too;
dreamed of giving his wife a better
home, a life of greater ease, and rest from
the endless cooking, cleaning, sweep-
ing, the boiling of meal for the fowls
while he went on his rounds to sell
them.

He dreamed of giving her the house
that she loved, and thought of her be-
side him on the lawn in the warm
summer evenings, watching the water-
birds upon the pond and the lilies that
closed at sunset. He dreamed, and the
dream helped him, too, in the struggle
for existence, for there seemed little
promise of better things.

But how Mary loved that old house!
and sometimes her yearning hurt him.
It hurt him to hear her talk of it so
often, knowing that he would never be
able to afford to give it her.

It hurt him to see the lines of care
and weariness return to the face that
was so happy when she awoke from her
dream. If only his Uncle Charles ... 1

But it was no use thinking of that,
for he had a son to inherit his money.
Mary never tired of talking about that

house, and Jim listened because it made
her happy to talk about it.

FEAR

When he came in from the farmyard
to his midday meal, so well cooked by
his wife, and so daintily served, she
always had a new story of it to tell him
— something new she had seen there or
thought of doing to the garden, till Jim
began to fear that it preyed too much
upon her mind. But her mind was
always so clear, and the house so real
to her, that he let her chatter on.

•‘You know, Jim, when you are out
with the fowls and I am doing my work,
I hardly know I am here, and feel that
I am in that garden.”

One morning Mary awoke with a
puzzled expression on her face which
Jim was quick to notice.

“My sweet,” said he, “you haven’t
dreamt of the house this time.”

“Yes, I have, but it was not the same.
There was fear in it that had not been
there before. It was . . . uncomfort-
able. ... I don’t know how to
describe it, but it was not so happy. I
thought I saw people there and they
were afraid of something.

“Yes, I remember now ... in the
lounge ... a woman sitting on the
couch reading . . . she suddenly
dropped her book and rushed from the
room. I have had that kind of dream
before. Once there were two little girls
playing on the lawn; they looked up,
threw out their arms and ran into the
house. I was not afraid, but they
were.”

“You must stop thinking and talking
about that house, my sweet.” And Jim
hastened to change the subject when-
ever she returned to it.

Confound Uncle Charles! The old
man was rich enough to give him the
house and not miss the money it cost.
He could give Mary something that
meant to her even more than the
children they could not afford. If it

THE GHOST HOUSE 37

were not for his useless son, Robert,
who had never done a day’s work in his
life, he would inherit his fortune. Con-
found Robert 1

It was six months later when Jim
found a registered letter on his plate
at breakfast.

“That looks exciting, Jim. What is
it?”

Jim read his name on the front of it;
turned it over and looked at the seals
on the back; weighed it in his fingers.

“I don’t know,” said he.

“Why not open it dear? Might be
lots of money.”

“Not likely,” said Jim breaking the
seals.

He read it through in silence and
then began at the beginning and read it
through again. Could it be true or had
he begun to dream? The room swam
before his eyes.

It was from Uncle Charles’s
solicitors. There had been an accident
... a very sad motor accident and
Mr. Charles Bancroft and his son,
had been killed. Would Mr. James
Bancroft communicate. . . ?

Terriblel Father and son, both
killed. . . . Uncle Charles and Robert
were dead . . . dead . . . yes, both dead I ”

“Is anything wrong dear?’”

Without speaking, Jim got up from
the table; went across to the window
and looked out at the hen coops. There
seemed to be thousands of hen coops
. . . coops as far as he could see . . .
coops that he hated the sight of.

“Jim, dear! What’s the matter? Is
anything wrong?”

“Wrong!” echoed Jim. “Good God
nol Nothing’s wrong. Read that.”

Mary took the letter and read it
through in silence. For a moment she
looked at Jim, and then in an almost
inaudible whisper.

“Jiml Jiml The house 1”

Jim looked at his watch.

“I can just catch it,” said he.

Mary was alone. She fed the fowls
and filled their drinking bowls; left a
note for Jim, took her bicycle and rode
to the village.

She hired the ramshackle taxi and
drove ten miles in it to the house. It
looked deserted. There were no cur-
tains at the windows; the lawn was un-
mown and weeds grew in the flower-
beds, but smoke issued from one of the
chimneys.

Mary rang the bell and waited.

The door was opened by an old man.
His hair was white as snow and his back
was bent with age, but his wrinkled face
was gentle and radiated peace and
goodwill.

“At lastl” said he. “Come in, dear
lady, come in. I am the caretaker.”

Mary looked at him in some surprise.

“Is this house to let?” she asked.

“It has been to let for six months and
no one will take it.”

“But why not?”

“It is haunted.”

Mary shuddered and her heart sank.

“Haunted 1 And you live here all
alone? What is the ghost?”

“A young and beautiful woman,”
said he smiling.

“Have you ever seen her?”

“Very often.”

“And you are not afraid?”

“No. — You are the ghost.”

The Hill Road

And the Haunted Motor
Car

by G. CASEY

A LLOW me to introduce myself
and an experience which befell
- me during a late month of last
year, the memory of which has beset
me so that I have not known a moment
of rest day and night until this hour.
I have passed through a horror from
which even the relief of description has
been denied me, for the common-sense
men among whom I work and live look
askance at the unwilling witness of
strange happenings.

So it happens that a written narrative
is the only outlet for the unhealthy
fears and presences which scepticism
has compelled me to dam up within my
mind. For, when the intelligence of
man comes up against a state or enters
a sphere which is beyond its compre-
hension, then the man lives with fear as
his bedfellow until he can proportion
the load upon the shoulders of his herd
and lose his own strangeness as the
waters of a brook are lost, commingled
and dissolved in the flow of the river.

But the instinct of the herd detects
such fear in the individual and shies
away from him, leaving his fear to
burgeon and work on his mind like
yeast in a vat.

I am Marco Cervera, a Spaniard of
good family, a family which has served
our country for generations within the
state, beyond the seas and, of later
years, in the vineyards of Jerez de la
Frontera. Here, for the past two
hundred years, my fathers have culti-
vated the pale grapes from which
sherry is made, pressed them into the
golden wine, and shipped them off to
England, and all over the world.

acquiring for themselves in the process,
and for me, a handsome fortune and a
name which is consonant with integrity
and position.

There is a strain of English blood in
my family (the three demi-lions of the
Culpeppers are quartered in one corner
of our bearings), and an English in-
fluence and sympathy which is a good
deal stronger. My grandfather, my
father and I were all educated at Win-
chester and Queen’s College, and
regular business trips in later years to
the great London houses who handle
our wines have contrived to make me,
at any rate, more of an Englishman
than a Spaniard.

Chief factor of all is that I am a con-
fessed anglophile, a student of the
greatest race and the most insoluble
enigma that the world has ever known.
Londoners do not guess that I am a
foreigner until they catch my name
aright; countrymen recognise me as of
the soil, and, by the soil, they mean
only English soil.

I set down all this only to show you
that the events which I am coming to
describe are the witness of one who has
some pretensions to education, who
cannot lightly be dismissed as an
emotional Latin.

The civil war which is still racking
my unhappy country ruined the busi-
ness which two hundred years of loving
care had built up, and made of me a
refugee and a nithling. With the swift-
ness of palsy, the venerable firm of Jose
Cervera y Compania ceased to exist,
and with it went my life of wealth,
traditional and commercial eminence.

THE HILL ROAD

39

As I say, I came to England as little
more than a refugee (I called you
English the most insoluble enigma in
the world. Why do you harbour
foreigners when your own countrymen
are on the dole?).

My fortunes, however, did not
entirely desert me. Almost at once I
received an offer to join the staff of a
small firm of London wine-shippers as
a representative. Not a firm, ad-
mittedly, in the front line of the trade,
but one which had the advantage of a
young director with progressive ideas
on the board.

Briefly, the young director believed
that a representative who had the
education of an English gentleman,
who knew sherry better than his own
soul, and yet who was of undeniable
Spanish extraction, might do much to
advance the fortunes of Gray & Geer-
ing, Wine-shippers and Distillers. The
young director was right.

My terms were generous. An
adequate salary, commission on orders
received and the discount of my travel-
ling expenses, soon enabled me to
establish myself in a modest way in
a charming Kentish village in the
Darenth valley, from which I made my
journeys.

My firm had provided me with a car,
a second-hand saloon of American
origin, monstrous proportions and
blatant design. (You English, why do
you buy your cars abroad when you
have the finest automobile engineers in
the world on your doorstep? Why do
you buy your luxuries overseas when
your country men are in want?)

As I came to know the roads of the
district, I discovered a side-road — a
beautiful hill-slope arched over at one
end with magnificent beeches — whereby
I could cover the last few miles to
Eynsford without the dangers of the
arterial road. I used the road habitu-
ally, loving the quietness and the peace
and the beauty of it. Then I became
vaguely disturbed.

STRANGE JOURNEY

I was hurrying back
from a journey to the
South Coast on a dark
November night. I
turned into this old
road and drove quickly
over the first mile of its
length, vaguely admiring the bare,
storm-tossed boughs of the beeches
against the lesser darkness of the
winter sky. My thoughts, such as they
were, were about equally divided
between the leafless beauty of ihe
beeches and the supper and the warm
hearth that lay five miles ahead.

The tinted windows of the car ad-
mitted a faint glimmer of starlight, and
the discreet glow of the dashlight
served further to diffuse the gloom. The
big engine was running smoothly, and
brought the car to the top of the rise
without a fault.

I had just topped the crest, and was
driving slowly down the other side of
the hill on the last lap home, when a
curious knowledge possessed me. I
knew that I was no longer alone.

The big car and I, drifting smoothly
through the night, were no longer an
entity. It seemed as if there were
others with us, as if I were quietly
driving with companions — and yet I
was alone. Home, I put the car away
with the not unpleasant reflection,
vague but piquant, that the journey
had not been as tedious as before. I
was to envy my own detachment a week
later.

Each of my journeys during the
following seven days brought me home
through the old road between the
beech-trees, and increasingly I became
aware that there were others making
the journey with me, others whom I
could not see. Often I glanced shame-
facedly over my shoulder into the back
seat. The ruby-greenish pallor of the
dashlight inevitably showed that the
body of the car was empty.

Once I switched on the interior light

40

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

and closely inspected the back. It was
huge, cheaply upholstered with deep
seats and a stained patch of carpet on
the floor and was most conclusively
empty. Then, as the days passed on,
the manifestation of the presence
began to increase. They who rode with
me began to encroach on my senses as
well as on my imagination.

My feeling that I was no longer
driving alone I knew to be true.
Further, I had to admit that I could
hear things, faint sounds, a whispering
and the pulse of a struggle and a
scuffle.

Yet the back of the car was empty
and bare. On Thursday night, the
sounds had so wrought upon me that I
halted on the crest of the hill, alighted
and walked round the car to assure
myself, at least, that no material change
had taken place.

The car’s enormous tail, the twin
rear-lights, protuberant and obscene as
the eyes of lobsters, the vast expanse of
dingy celluose and the fat redun-
dancies of the wings were as faultless
in their effrontery as ever they were.
There was no sign of an accident on
tyre, bumper or running-board.

Then I resumed my seat at the wheel,
and then I became still, and the pores
of my skin rose and pricked and my
brow was icy cold — for I had returned
into that dreadful Company. There-
after, I avoided Old Polhill — as the
road was called — and made my way
homeward by the great arterial road
that ran along a higher slope of the
Weald, counting two extra miles and
the dangers of a right-handed turn
lightly against the shadow of the old
road below me.

Then came December, with the snow-
drifts lying heavily on Polhill. The
great arterial road was a mosaic of skid-
marks between deep banks of snow and
slush. With a shiver of distaste and
with a sudden resolution, I changed
down to third and swung off from the
main road and on to Old Polhill.

Gradually, the big car slowed down

before the gradient and then, within
fifty yards of the summit, I heard the
sounds again. They came dreadfully
loudly — a scuffling, as of a struggle; a
whining sound, almost like a human
being begging or pleading and, over all,
the deeper and more authoritative mur-
mur of what suggested itself to me
as a man’s voice.

Then came a hideous screech of
terror — plangent and unmistakable —
which declined into a blabbering run of
pleading, supplicating notes, terribly
like the whimpering of a trapped
rabbit. I sat immobile and sweating at
the wheel. My foot on the accelerator
froze and the big car stalled, spluttered,
and came to a standstill. With a final
tremor the engine was at rest. Except
for Those that were with me, I was still
and alone.

A dreadful screech rang out, together
with the admonitory bass of a man’s
voice. The screech rose to an intense
pitch and almost strung me to the pitch
of jumping from the car and seeking
safety among the dank boles of the
trees.

But, as my mind turned frantically
towards escape, the scream was
abruptly checked; it seemed as though
the sound now came from behind a
muffling veil; and thereafter there was
only a succession of choking noises,
infinitely more dreadful.

TERROR IN THE WOOD

I cannot describe
my state at the
time. Terror is the
word that keeps
springing to my
mind, but it is in-
sufficient to apply
to the condition of
immobile panic to
which I was re-
duced. I can only hint at it by liken-
ing my mental attitude to that of the
victim dragged to a sacrificial altar and

THE HILL ROAD 41

held thereon for the length of the
incantation.

I was at my wits’ end with shock and
dread when deliverance came creeping
slowly through the night. In the driv-
ing-mirror I could faintly discern two
waq pools of light adjacent to one
another, such as might come from the
candle-lanterns of a country cart. With
agonising slowness the feeble illumina-
tions became larger; yet I sat as if
paralysed and unable to stir a limb.

The dreadful sounds from the rear
became more intense and dramatic as
the approaching vehicle drew near. The
seat creaked wildly, and the gibbering
accelerated to another wild screech.

The palms of my hands were as wet
as mill-wheels, and my feet and the
features of my face seemed to be
making motions beyond my knowledge.
Chained, speechless and numb, I
prayed frantically for the arrival of the
creeping vehicle, implored those thin
pale lights to come near and ease my
terror.

They came near at last and the noise
in the back stifled itself into a deep,
murmurous, declining breathing of air.
The two candle-lanterns waxed and
waned in a slight vaporous haze, such
as might emanate from the body of a
horse sweating his way uphill. Dis-
tantly, I could discern the ragged out-
line of brushes and pots and pans, the
usual concomitants of the trade of a
travelling tinker.

And, even as I watched, there came
from the rear of the car a most dread-
ful scream, far transcending in its
crescendo the earlier piteous outcries;
then it was muffled again, and strangled,
and died quickly away in a series of
spasmodic gaspings. Yet not spas-
modic, for each gasp seemed hideously
to synchronise with the weary plodding
of hooves, as the tinker’s van drew
abreast and passed on.

For a brief instant, I could discern
the face of the driver peering down
towards me in the yellow glow of the
candle-lanterns. A narrow, bearded,

evil face, sinister and sharply curious.

The noises at the back gathered
themselves into a last intensification of
conflict and then died away. A smooth,
slithery sound followed, terminated by
a soft bump, as if some plastic bulk had
fallen to the floor-boards of the car.
There was a deep breathing, irregular,
intense and exhausted. A hideous
thing had passed.

Something broke around me and
gave me legs. I stumbled from the car
and raced up the steep bank of loam
towards the arterial road. Its wet shin-
ing surface seemed prosaic and soothing
after the darkness of the valley. I
think I must have been shouting and
striking out with my fists against the
evil stare of the tinker, which I saw
again and again in the gnarled and
twisted boles of the beeches. The sough
of their branches sounded like a soft
body falling to earth.

I stopped the first car that passed
along the arterial road and implored the
driver’s help. Even as he was gaping
at my ravings a black sports car drew
up alongside and two policemen
alighted. Almost I could have clutched
them, for the familiar uniform and
decorous presence of the law was as
the green earth after the filth of the pit
into which I had peeped.

Briefly, and as coherently as I could,
I told my story. They listened atten-
tively, but unmoved. Then the driver
of the police car, a young man with a
slick manner and a nasty smear of
black moustache on either side of his
mouth, enquired the number of my car.

I told him and then, in a very wooden
voice, low-pitched, as though he were
asking a question to which he knew the
answer, he asked for a description of
the vehicle.

“Wisconsin, twenty-five horse-
power,” I answered, “grey body with
scarlet room and . . .”

“. . . green-tinted windows,” added
the young policeman in the same tone.
Then he affected a brisker address.
“You’d better stay here, sir, whilst we

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

4 *

go down and take a look round.”

I sat in the back of the black sports
car and watched them disappear, down-
wards between the dark trees, feeling
sick within myself and shivering fright-
fully. Soon they returned and, when
they spoke, their voices were dull and
troubled, and they kept their eyes
fixed to the ground.

“Seems the best thing that we can
do is for me to drive this gentleman
home, whilst you take his car along to
the station,” said the policeman who
drove. “He can pick it up in the
morning.”

As we pulled up outside my door, I
remembered that it was Friday night,
my housekeeper’s day off. Supper
would be laid ready for me, but I shied
at the hint of loneliness in the empty
house. Making it an impulse of hos-
pitality, I dragged the young policeman
in for a drink. Nothing loath, he settled
himself in the deep arm-chair before the
fire and drank thirstily of the tumbler
of brandy and soda which I pressed
upon him. He watched me from
beneath lowered lashes as I hustled
about to envelope myself in the atmos-
phere of home, and the things which
were solid and tangible and which I
loved.

THE STORY

Then he
told me the
story of Old
Polhill.

Some three
years ago, it
appeared, a
Major Cobb
(and I had
sufficiently
recovered to
enqu ire of
myself why you English tolerate these
pretentious civilian majors), a Major
Cobb went down the drop at Maid-
stone gaol, having confessed to the
murder of Alice Snow, a domestic

seivant from the near-by village of
Otford. The circumstances of the
crime were unusually sordid.

Cobb picked up the girl, as the ex-
pression is, as she was walking home
along the arterial road. She was
nothing averse to a drive in a gentle-
man’s motor-car with, possibly an
interval or two for mildly amorous ex-
ploration. Unhesitatingly, the galiant
major swung his car off from the main
road and turned up the dark tunnel of
Old Polhill. Near the top he stopped
the car and the couple retired to the
back seat.

Cobb, however, rapidly passed the
limit which the girl set upon her com-
plaisance and made a demand to which
she could not accede. Poor fool, Cobb
had surmounted such a difficulty be-
fore. Later on, exhausted with her
struggles, she was about to submit to
him on the score of expediency, when
she noticed the faint glimmer of candle-
lights in the driving-mirror which faced
her. That meant that another vehicle,
with presumably a man in control, was
coming up the hill.

Summoning her remaining strength,
she uttered a piercing scream for help.
But only once. Cobb’s retaliation was
instant. Now the more terrified of the
two, he slipped his woollen muffler
round her throat and stilled her cry.
With painful slowness the tinker’s van
— for such it was — drew abreast and
passed on.

The period must have been over five
minutes, and all the time the muffler was
drawing tighter and tighter under the
powerful leverage of Cobb’s arms and a
knee in the small of her back. The
tinker’s van disappeared into the damp
darkness ahead, and simultaneously did
Cobb reach the noon of his martial
career — by the panic strangulation of
an indiscreet kitchenmaid within the
body of a foreign motor-car.

The tinker, who considered the park-
ing of a car on Old Polhill at such an
hour smacked of irregularity, stopped
the next policeman whom he met and

THE HILL ROAD

descanted upon his doubts. The police-
man turned aside from his path and
came upon the car and, after a short
search, upon the craven warrior,
foolishly and feebly attempting to bury
the body among the sodden beech
leaves.

Three months later, a judge of the
High Court, his chaplain, his martial,
twelve jurymen, an under-sheriff, a
gaoler, a prison chaplain, a chief
warder, two principal warders, a
deputy prison governer, two ordinary
warders, an executioner and his two
assistants, and an engineer brought the
career of Major Cobb to a righteous
close.

“What day was it when she died?”
I asked hesitantly.

“This night three years back,”
answered the young policeman soberly.

“And the car?”

“The same car will be in the station
garage by now, sir,” was the answer.

The following morning I walked into
a garage in the local market town and

43

instructed the manager to value the car
as it stood in the yard of the police
station. When I got his price, I rang
up my firm on the telephone and asked
to be allowed to purchase the car for
that figure. After some genial chaff, the
young director agreed without serious
objection and I posted him a cheque — -
all the money I possessed in the world,
as it happened — within the next five
minutes.

I drove the car along the arterial
road to a car-breaker’s yard which I
had noticed idly on more than one occa-
sion. The proprietor willingly pur-
chased the car for fifteen pounds, on
condition that it was to be broken up
there and then and under my eyes.

As I watched the acetylene torch
carve and quarter the bulbous shape of
the hated machine there fell an eerie
stillness over the busy yard, enduring
for almost a full minute. A strange,
uncanny hush. Then someone laughed
a little unnaturally and the hammers
went clanging on as they had done
before.

Death Drum

The Witch Doctor’s Curse

by E. W. GRIER

T HE big man strode across to the
sideboard and splashed out a
half-tumbler of Cape brandy and
drank it neat, replenishing his glass
before flinging himself into a grass
chair.

“Well,” he snarled, “got anything to
say?”

His wife shrugged her shoulders.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” she said
wearily.

“You’re right for once. It wouldn’t.
I’m glad you’ve learned that amount of
sense at last.” He stopped to light a
cigarette. “Call your pet bushman to
come and take my leggings off, and
then get dinner ready. I can do with
it.”

Janet Kenton rose slowly from her
chair, but before she reached the door
she turned and faced her husband.

“Dinner was ready at seven. It’s
nine o’clock now, and ”

Kenton laughed harshly.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to
resist it. I know dinner is spoiled.
That’s nothing uncommon, anyway,
let’s have it. And if that nigger doesn’t
hurry I’ll get behind him with a
sjambok. He’s fit for little more than
a lady’s maid anyway.”

Ignoring the insult, Janet left the
room, returning a minute later, folloved
by a diminutive, wizened coloured nan.

“Take the master’s boots off, Tuis,”
she ordered, “and then you may go to
bed. It’s late.”

The little man knelt before his
master and set to work with trembling
fingers. But the woman, looking on,
knew that it was not fear that caused

DEATH DRUM

the agitation. There was little that the
African feared.

It was hatred — a burning hatred that
was born on her father’s farm during
the days of her engagement eight years
ago. After her marriage he had
followed her, covering the nine hundred
miles on foot in order to serve the mis-
tress whom he worshipped, as he had
served her father, and, as a child, her
grandfather.

Sometimes she wondered why she
had refused the little man’s many offers
to rid her of the bully that was her
husband; for Tuis, old in years, was
older in the knowledge of Africa than
the Zulus themselves. An ugly, strange
little man, but her only friend in this
harsh land.

Tuis replaced the boots with a pair
of old carpet-slippers, took up the dis-
carded footwear and left the room.

Kenton swallowed the rest of the
brandy and looked across the room at
his wife.

“Still sulking, eh? I thought we
understood each other last night, or do
you need another lesson?”

“Oh, don’t go over it all again. Max.
I can’t stand it. I thought last night
ended it when ”

“Cut out that mush,” said Kenton
scornfully. “Eight years ago I was
good enough for you; too good, you
said, in your sweet little way. You were
keen enough then. After all, no one
forced you to marry me. Why should
I leave you alone now? You’re still my
wife.”

He looked at her through narrowed
eyes. It was easy to see the strain
she was under, but he took a keen
delight in breaking down the control
she had once prided herself upon.

“You heard me, didn’t you?” he
rasped. “Why the hell should I leave
you alone?”

Janet stood up and walked to the
window. A young moon had replaced
the sun and shed a misty light over the
still cane-fields. Dark clumps of palms
and wild banana stood out like gloomy

45

sentinels in the distance where the cane
ended. But she was in no mood for the
beauty of the scene.

“God,” she prayed, “if I could only
leave it all. If I could only find peace.”
She turned to her husband.

“Why won’t you let me go, Max?
I’m no use to you,” she said in a low
voice. “What is the use of pretending
any longer? We both hate each other
— have hated each other ever since baby
died.” She raised her voice and began
to tremble. “In my madness I cursed
God when He took him away, but God
was wiser than I. Now I thank Him:
Oh, how I thank Him.” Her eyes stared
and she continued in a fierce whisper:
“But I curse you, his murdererl
Because you were afraid of what others
might see, you left me to the mercy
of a Zulu midwife.”

The amused sneer on her husband’s
face goaded her on, and she flung aside
all attempts at control. She took three
rapid steps towards him, her whole
body trembling violently.

“Why don’t you go back to your
black women and let me go? You
spend most of your time there. Why
not spend it all? You’re no longer a
white man; you’re going native and
think you’ll drag me with youl You
think you are going to keep me here,
don’t you? But you’rewrong. I’m going,
I tell you. D’you hear? You Kaffir 1”

The sneer disappeared from the
man’s face and he stood up suddenly
and struck her full in the mouth with
the back of his hand. The blow was a
brutal one and unexpected.

Janet’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

“Oh I” she gasped. “Oh!”

Her face was ashen and she stood
perfectly still before the angry man,
while a thin stream of blood ran from
her broken lips down her chin, stain-
ing her white linen frock, but her eyes
were still defiant.

Kenton struck her again. This time
she swayed and almost fell, and
clutched the back of a chair for sup-

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

46

port, but she still faced him, her eyes
dull with pain.

The big man stood over her men-
acingly.

“You asked for that,” he panted.
“You’ve been asking for it for a long
time. Well, now you’ve got it and
perhaps it will show you just where you
stand.”

He turned his back on his wife con-
temptuously and crossed to the side-
board, poured out another brandy,
drank it and sat down, eyeing the
trembling woman slyly.

With a great effort Janet calmed her
trembling body. She attempted to
speak, but her broken lips refused to
form the words. Then turning, she
stumbled from the room and down into
the garden, where she flung herself on
to the dew-sodden lawn and sobbed un-
controllably.

him”

A sound
caused her to
look up and,
she saw Tuis
standing be-
side her with
a tumbler of
water a n d a
clean towel.
She took them
from him
sUently and began to dab her bleeding
mouth.

The little yellow man knelt beside
her, peering anxiously into her face.

“I saw, Miss Janet,” he whispered.
“Let me kill him now, look.” He
showed her a handful of tiny feathered
arrows and a bow so small that he
could almost cover it with his hand.
“One of these and he will die where he
sits. Oh, that the daughter of old Baas
Brandon should be treated like a Zulu
umfazi. Tell me to kill him now, that
the spirit of the old Baas may rest.”

Janet shook her head.

“Rather kill me, Tuis. I am too
much of a coward to do it myself.”

The bushman was silent. His
gnarled, furrowed face was working
strangely, as if he was in pain. He was
thinking deeply.

“Listen, Miss Janet,” he whispered
presently, “if I may not kill him now,
there is hope that even now his death-
spirit is close to him. For when ’Mbusi,
the witch doctor, whom he flogged to
death, cursed him, Tuis was near;
hidden in the long grass behind the
stables. It was a terrible curse, Miss
Janet, and I have seen signs that ”

“I forbid you to speak like that,
Tuis,” ordered Janet sharply. “The
Baas Kenton is a white man and you
are a kaffir. Don’t let me hear you
speak like that again.”

The little man winced at the word
“kaffir” and sighed deeply. The whites
were a mystery to him. He tiptoed
towards the bungalow and peered
through the living-room window.

“Look, Miss Janet,” he said when he
returned, “the Baas is asleep, I think
he is very drunk and will not wake till
morning. Go to your room before the
night sickness takes you. Tuis will help
you, and if the Baas moves so much as
a finger he will die. I, Tuis, say it!”
He drew himself up and glared at his
mistress defiantly.

Janet was too weary to argue and she
followed the servant meekly into the
bungalow.

“Lock the door, Miss Janet,” whis-
pered Tuis. “To-morrow I will have a
plan.”

But Janet did not go to bed at once,
she sat in the darkness before the open
window and stared unseeing across the
moonlit cane-fields. For once she was
glad that her husband was drunk, at
least she had been spared the ordeal of
sitting before him at dinner. It wasn’t
like him to forget a meal.

Beyond the dark hibiscus hedge she
could see into the dimly-lit interior of
Tuis’s hut. Crouched before a large
bowl, from which an evil-looking smoke

1 WILL KILL

DEATH DRUM

47

was issuing, she saw the bushman; the
feeble light was shining right into his
face and the expression she saw on it
was frightening. She could see from
the movement of his lips that he was
talking.

She shuddered and drew the curtains.
There are hidden places in the lives of
these little Africans into which it is
not good to pry. She sat in the dark-
ness thinking, and the little breeze that
precedes the dawn was stirring the
broad leaves of the banana-palms be-
fore she went to bed.

Janet did not see her husband until
the evening of the next day; his face
was puffy and discoloured, and it was
evident that he had been drinking
heavily. But she was glad to observe
that his truculent manner had left him.
During dinner he cast furtive, almost
ashamed glances in her direction, but
the only remark he vouchsafed was that
he had “a hell of a head.”

It was late when the first note of the
drum beat upon their ears; its effect
upon Kenton was startling. He sprang
from his chair, upsetting the glass of
brandy from the arm and stared at his
wife with a strange, questioning fear
in his bloodshot eyes. For fully a
minute he maintained the pose and then
sank slowly into his chair, grasping the
wooden arms until his fingers whitened.

Fear is an ugly thing, especially
when it is seen on a big man. Janet
had never seen her husband afraid,
and she was alarmed at the sight. His
body seemed to shrink and a dull, dead
expression came into his eyes; the ex-
pression that comes into the eyes of an
animal when he senses the approach of
death.

The throb of the drum was regular
and deep; it seemed to come from a
great distance, its beat felt rather than
heard. To the listeners in the silent
room it might have been the throbbing
of some gigantic heart. Then it grew
faint, until it almost faded away, when
it was brought back on the wind with

an intensity that seemed to vibrate the
very windows.

In no country in the world is the
beat of a drum so awe-inspiring, so
pregnant with mystery, as it is in
Africa. All nature holds its breath to
listen during the shuddering spells; the
ceaseless song of the cicada is hushed,
and even the frog-choir in the marshes
pauses to hear.

FEAR

Kenton ’s
display of
fear puzzled
Janet, until
she remem-
bered that,
years ago, he
had given in-
structions
that every
drum on the
farm was to be destroyed, but of the
cause she had no knowledge. She took
a furtive glance at him, his face was
drawn and haggard, and the stubble on
his chin showed up sharply against his
grey skin. He was breathing quickly,
and she could hear him whispering:

“Godl Godl”

The beat of the drum ceased
abruptly and Kenton sagged in his
chair like a man who has been sud-
denly released from the grip of an
electric current. Presently he rose, pale
and shaking, and poured out half a
tumbler of brandy and drank it at a
gulp. The fiery spirit seemed to bring
back a little of his confidence, but the
shadow of fear still lurked in his eyes.
He turned and faced his wife and made
an attempt to explain his behaviour.

“Godl How I hate that sound — I
always have,” he muttered.

“But Max,” ventured Janet, “I don’t
understand. What is there about the
sound that makes you so — that upsets
you so? You’re not a native.”

She no longer feared this man whom

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

48

fear had stripped of all bluster, indeed,
a tinge of pity had taken its place.

Kenton did not reply at once, but
began pacing the floor with slow steps,
while the discordant song of the night
insects filled the little room with sound.
Suddenly he stopped and faced his
wife, his eyes were pleading.

“Janet,” he muttered. “You’ve got
to help me. I know I’ve made you hate
me, but you loved me once. You’ve
got to help me, I say!” He paused to
mop his forehead. “I’ll tell you the
whole thing, then you will pity me —
you must — after all, you’re a woman.

“You remember the death of the
witch-doctor fellow, ’Mbusi? You did
not know that it was through a flogging
that he died, did you? It was I that
flogged him, egged on by the swine who
has taken his place, Imfezi. Although
he deserved to die, I never meant to kill
him, but he was old and couldn’t stand
up to it. You must believe that.” His
voice fell to a whisper.

Before ’Mbusi died he cursed me.
You may laugh at that, but I have
always lived among these people and I
have seen things — terrible things. You
don’t know. I remember the words —
every one of them — as if it were
yesterday; I can even see his red eyes
and his thin, poisonous lips. This is
what he said:

“ ‘You have killed me, white man,
who is also a snake. As the puff-adder
warns its enemies, so shall I warn you,
but my warning will be the drum — the
drum of death! Listen for it, white
man, in the quiet of the night, for I,
who shall be a snake, will return to
kill voul’

“That is how ’Mbusi cursed me, and
I have received his warning. You
heard it.”

Janet was by now thoroughly
alarmed. She knew, of course, that
among the Zulus the curse of a witch-
doctor was feared above all things, and
only spoken of in whispers, but her
husband was a white man, a man of
substance and authority, to whom the

curse of a savage should mean nothing.

“Max,” she said sharply, “you ought
to be ashamed of yourself. There are
things about you that 1 dislike, but I
have always admired your courage.
Now you seem to be turning coward.
What we heard was probably some
umfaan amusing himself, and no con-
nection with the curse at all. Do try
and pull yourself together.”

A new light came into Kenton’s eyes.

“You may be right, Janet, Umga-
zana has got a beer drink on to-night.
That’ll be where it came from. I’ll
break his blasted neck to-morrow. I’ll
call that bushman of yours, he may
know something about it.”

He went to the back of the house
and roared into the night. There was
no reply at first, but at the second call
the little man appeared, his eyes blink-
ing in the bright light.

“Where have you been? Why the
devil don’t you come at once?” asked
Kenton.

“I was in my hut, baas,” stammered
the bushman. “The drum frightened
me. Evil spirits are about, my baas.
This very night I saw the black shadow
of a snake in the moon, and there was
a ”

“That will do,” snapped the planter.
“I want to know who was beating the
drum. Do you know anything about
it?” He eyed the servant suspiciously.

“Me, baas?” enquired Tuis with
innocent surprise. “How should Tuis
know? That was no man, it was an evil
spirit. Tuis has no dealings with
spirits. It was the death drum, and
the shadow of a snake on the moon was
a sign that ”

“Oh, to blazes with your signs!”
roared Kenton. “Tell Imfezi that I
want to see him to-morrow morning —
no, tell him to be here at sunset. I’ll
swear that scoundrel knows something
about it. Leave early in the morning.”

“But baas,” ventured Tuis, “how can
Imfezi help? His medicine is not strong
enough to fight death. Better baas get
on to his horse and ride to the railway.

DEATH DRUM

49

From there he may go to Durban and
perhaps escape the death. For though
I cannot say for certain that the death
drum is for baas, it is well known that
it is only beaten when a great man is
about to die, and who is there greater
than baas?

“Nevertheless, I will tell Imfezi, who
is old, and therefore wise. It may be
that he can help.” He shook his head
sadly and added: “But me, I do not
think so." Something in the white
man's eyes must have warned him, for
he sprang back just in time to avoid a
vicious kick, and disappeared in the
direction of his hut.

NIGHT SOUNDS

Janet no-
ticed that
her husband
avoided her
eyes when
he returned
to the living-
r o o m, but
she saw that
the fear had
returned.
When she
saw him reach for the bottle of brandy
she gave up all idea of being able to
help him and, wishing him good night,
she went to her bedroom. Unable to
sleep, she lay under the screened
window and listened to the night
sounds — the sounds that had frightened
her so when she first arrived at the
farm with her husband.

Now, there was something comfort-
ing about them, the heavy drone of the
frogs, the shrill chorus of the cicada,
and the dry rasping of the banana
leaves when the breeze stirred them,
the cry of the bush-baby. The mys-
terious, fascinating music of Africa

The next day, half an hour before
sunset, Imfezi presented himself at the
farm. He was clad in the traditional
garb of the witch-doctor; a wizened,

dried-up specimen of the Zulu race. On
his head he wore the blown-up bladder
of a goat, and suspended from his neck
was a necklet composed of the dyed
vertebra of snakes. For clothing he
wore a girdle of monkeys’ tails.

Tuis, after having registered the ex-
pressions of awe and fear that every
member of the dark art considers his
due, called his master. Imfezi’s salute
was perfunctory, unlike the respectful
greeting that is usually accorded the
white man by the Zulu.

“The ’Nkoos sent for Imfezi,” he
began in a quiet voice, “and he has
come. Is it that the ’Nkoos wishes him
to throw the bones? Have his cattle
strayed or is it perhaps an enemy that

Kenton cut him short.

“Enough of that talk, Imfezi. You
know what I want to know. Last night
I heard a drum beaten. What do you
know about it?”

The old man stared at the planter
impassively and answered slowly:

“The ’Nkoos who knows the ways of
the Zulus, knows surely that it is no
man who beats the death drum — that
it is a spirit? And Imfezi, even Imfezi
would not dare to throw the bones, for
they, who are the silent tongues of the
spirits, cannot speak against the will of
their masters. Especially when it is he
who dwells in the shadows.”

The big man’s attitude was menacing.

“Imfezi,” he began in a low voice,
“you know the kind of man I am and I
know you. I know you for the scoundrel
you are, and I mean to get the truth
out of you, if I have to squeeze it from
you with my two hands. Out with itl”

The threat left the ancient Zulu un-
moved.

“Even the white man, it seems, does
not know everything,” he said, with an
insolent light in his eyes, “or he would
know that Imfezi, who is only the slave
of the spirits, cannot question his
masters.” He gave an expressive little
shudder. “If that is all that the ’Nkoos

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

50

wants from me, I fear I can be of no
help to him.” He turned to go.

“No, you don’t,” snarled Kenton,
“I’m going to show you that I am your
master I” He produced from behind
his back a small but vicious-looking
sjambok. “Now,” he said grimly, “the
truth!”

The eyes of the witch - doctor
flickered, but he gave no other sign.
He was silent.

A sudden rage overcame the planter.
He stepped back a pace, and with a
lightning-like movement struck savagely
at the native. The cruel lash split the
parchment skin of Imfezi’s face and
blood ran on to his naked chest. He
winced but did not move.

“That is only the beginning,” panted
Kenton, “speak, unless you want me to
strip your hide off you ! ”

The Zulu’s eyes became mere slits.

“I can see that the ’Nkoos recalls
the curse of ’Mbusi. Does he want
Imfezi to curse him too?” He laughed,
and the sound was like the crackle of
breaking sticks.

Tuis, who heard the sound, shivered.

“Surely,” he said to himself, “Imfezi
will blast him where he stands.” For
the laugh of the witch-doctor is like the
warning of a puff-adder.

Imfezi drew himself up and pointed
a long, withered finger at Kenton.

“Umlungo,” he began in a low voice,
vibrant with anger, “you have struck
Imfezi, and for that you should suffer,
but you are in the hands of the spirits
and I may not touch you.” His voice
became shrill and little flecks of foam
appeared on his lips. His pointing
finger quivered. “They wait for you,
Umlungo!” He turned abruptly and
walked away.

No Zulu uses the word “umlungo”
(which means white man) except as an
insult, but if Kenton heard it he gave
no sign. To Janet, who stood in the
doorway, he looked like a man who has
staked everything and lost, and who
has given up hope.

That evening the slow throb of the

drum came upon them again, but to
Kenton it was like lashing an uncon-
scious man. His face flushed, and his
eyes staring through the open window,
he sat in silence. He had not moved
when Janet rose and went to bed. He
was still in the same position when the
lamp gave a little flicker and went out,
filling the room with the stench of
smouldering wick.

When Madevu, the kitchen-boy,
entered the room early next morning,
he was surprised to find his master
asleep and fully clothed. He placed two
cups of coffee on the table, knocked on
the door of his mistress’s room and
stole silently away.

An hour later he peered into the
room and saw that his master had not
moved. He sought the advice of Tuis.

The Bushman sneered.

“Is the Zulu such a coward that he
is afraid to waken the Baas?” He spat
with contempt. “I, Tuis, will show
you.” He stepped towards a shelf upon
which was displayed a glittering array
of pots and pans, and swept them to
the floor with a deafening clatter.

With an oath Madevu leapt at him,
but Tuis was adept at this game and
easily avoided his rushes.

“Stop this baboon business,
Madevu,” grinned the little man. “I
have shown you how to wake the Baas.
If he does not wake now, he is dead.”

Madevu grunted.

“You have disturbed the ’Nkosikaas
needlessly and the ’Nkoos still sleeps.”

Tuis peered into the living-room, and
after signing to the other to be silent,
tiptoed towards the silent form in the
chair. When he returned there was a
serious expression in his small eyes.

“I said you were a baboon, Madevu,”
he whispered, “for who but a fool would
not have seen that the Baas is deadl
There is a strange thing in that room,
the Baas is dead and there is a puff-
adder under the table. The strange
thing is that the Baas has not been
bitten. His body is still white and it is
well known that the body of a white

DEATH DRUM

man turns black when the ibululu bites
him.”

The kitchen-boy trembled and turned
a dirty grey colour.

“Lend me one of your sticks, Kaffir,”
said Tuis scornfully, “and I will kill the
snake while you pick up your pots.
Then I will tell Miss Janet.”

That evening Janet saw the little
man crouching over his fire. He was
muttering to himself, and she caught a
word here and there. He was praying,
if it could be called that, that the spirits
he had invoked would leave him. The

Si

sweat streamed from his tortured face
as he bent over the fire. She moved
closer, suspicion mounting in her brain.

She saw the Bushman poke with a
stick something that writhed and
twisted in the flames like a living
thing. She caught her breath when she
saw that in the heart of the fire were
the charred remains of a small native
drum.

The distant howl of a hungry jackal
broke the long silence, and Janet re-
turned to the bungalow as silently as
she had come.

Armands Return

The Old Qardener’s Secret

by

T HERE will remain with me, as
long as I live, the memory of a
garden. A garden singular; fan-
tastic, you will say. But whether or no
this strange episode rightly belongs to
the realms of fantasy does not greatly
matter; in moments of darkness I re-
call again its fragrant image and I am
well content.

It happened not so long ago at the
country residence of a friend of mine.
I had been invited there upon my re-
turn to England, after nearly three
years of aimless wandering, during
which time I had learned only too well
the significance of the old adage refer-
ing to “rolling stones.”

It was in the early autumn that I
began my sojourn at the house of my
friend. The fading glory of summer
had but with lingering reluctance given
way to the advent of the most colour-
ful season of the year and the country-
side was at its best. Almost the first
thing I noticed about the place where
I was to stay was the garden.

Although no lover of anything that
suggests cultivation I was immediately
struck with its sheer beauty.

It was very large and set out in
terraces and steps with winding path-
ways leading through rockeries and be-
neath trellised archways covered with
rambling roses whose fragrance took
one’s breath away. There were little
shady arbours almost obscured by thick
foliage; and rhododendron bushes.
Exquisite little rock plants, many-hued,
clustered and spread everywhere so
that not a patch of earth was visible,

HENRY RAWLE

while convulvulus and creeper strug-
gled and climbed in tangled profusion
on either hand.

In midsummer this must indeed
have been a garden of delight, but now,
strewn about the moss-grown pathways,
rose-petals mingled with the gold and
brown of the fallen leaves. For the
summer was gone and the roses were
fading. My bedroom, I noticed, which
was at ground-level, looked out on to
the garden, easy access to which was
provided by the French windows which
opened out on to a low balcony.

The strange beauty of the garden
affected me greatly, and later on in the
day I remarked to my host upon its
wonderful arrangement and design. He
mentioned almost casually that its
present formation was practically
identical with the original which was
laid out nearly a century ago, and that
it was tended daily by an old gardener
who lived in the near-by village. He
had, it appeared, looked after the
garden for very many years before my
host had taken over the tenancy.

“He’s a queer bird,” said my host,
“hardly ever speaks; but you’ll always
find him somewhere about the garden
trimming this or cutting that. It’s his
religion, that garden, he’s spent a life-
time in it.”

There he let the matter drop, and for
the rest of the evening we talked as two
friends will who are reunited after a
breach of three years.

That night the moon was high and
the garden was transformed into a place
of enchantment. Beautiful by day, in

ARMAND’S

the moonlight it became a fairyland of
indescribable wonder; a place of in-
triguing shadows, fantastic, unreal.
For a long while I stood gazing out
upon the scene; and even after I had
got into bed the moonlit garden still
called to me through the tall windows.

My dreams that night were inter-
laced with autumn leaves and moon-
light and fading roses. The next night
the attraction of the garden was not to
be resisted, and passing through the
French windows I stepped out into the
cool night air; wandering beneath the
trellised briers for a while before re-
tiring for the night.

It was on the third night that the in-
credible adventure befell me. I had
turned in with but a cursory glance
through the lofty windows resolved to-
night not to fall under the spell of that
magical garden. But later I awoke
with a start from deep slumber, my
attention riveted upon the window
through which the pale moonlight
played far into the room.

At first I put it down to a trick of
perspective, an illusion caused by the
shadows and the moonlight, but when
I looked again I saw. I saw her stand-
ing there, a girl, a vision of delight.
She stood peering eagerly into the room
and tapping on the window.

She appeared to be dressed in the
fashion of a bygone age, yet her clothes
were scanty, almost negligible, of a
soft filmy material. I was transfixed,
yet not afraid, for her eyes were re-
assuring and lovely beyond words. And
her face; a face more beautiful I never
saw nor ever wish to see.

As I watched spellbound she
beckoned me; at first amazement held
me fast; then, like a man hypnotised, I
arose and moved slowly towards the
windows. Gently I swung them open
lest I should scare away this creature
of my dream.

But it was no dream; there she stood.
Silent and mysterious she led the way
down into the garden with a step so
light she seemed scarce to touch the

RETURN S3

ground. Down the wandering path-
ways beneath the rose-laden arches
through which the moon penetrated
weirdly weaving a grotesque tapestry
of light and shade where we walked.

Among the shady rockeries where
the tiny creeping plants looked of a
strange and unnatural hue in the moon-
light. Its revealing radiance trans-
formed all into a scene of exquisite
beauty: a picture of indescribable
delicacy. My lovely guide with her
elusive charm seemed somehow to be-
long to this garden of delight.

THE MYSTIC SUMMER-HOUSE

The night air was warm, and heavy
with the scent of roses. I walked close
beside her now, yet she seemed not to
notice me. Yet sometimes it seemed as
though she whispered softly; but it
may have been only the rustling of the
fallen leaves. . . .

Once she paused, and reaching up to
the tangled briers plucked one of the
fragrant blooms; with a smile that was
both sweet and sad she held it out for
me to take, yet she smiled not at me,
but beyond me.

Wondering, I took the symbolic
flower and followed on. Now our way
had led us to the bottom of the garden,
where, almost obscured from view by
creepers and ramblers, there nestled an
old stone summer-house. Involuntarily
I paused, for never before had I seen
a structure of this description, either
here nor in any other part of the
grounds. But my silent companion
kept on; and as she crossed the thres-
hold inexplicably she disappeared.

For a moment I stood irresolute,
then, turning, I slowly made my way
back through that shadowy garden of
the roses which now seemed strangely
empty and bereft of beauty. Thought-
fully I closed the French windows be-
hind me; but sleep, so unaccountably
disturbed, eluded me for a long while.

I slept late into the morning, and

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

54

when I awoke the golden sunshine
streamed in through the windows. My
experience of the night seemed
strangely unreal, weird, fantastic; with
a start I remembered the rose. Irresist-
ibly my eyes strayed to the little table
where, the night before, I had left it.

There it was, startling in its tangi-
bility; indisputable evidence of an in-
credible adventure.

I said nothing to my host of the hap-
penings of the night, but at the earliest
opportunity went out into the garden.
I remembered distinctly where, last
night, my strange quest had so abruptly
ended. I looked for the rambler-
covered bower; but in vain. No
summer-house was there, nor any sign
of one in the vicinity; only dense shrub-
bery and tangled briars.

Completely puzzled by the whole
mysterious affair, I sought to explain
this curious situation. Ultimately I
came to the conclusion that there must
be attached to this most unusual
garden some legend or history and that
the person most likely to know of such
a thing was the old gardener.

Immediately I set off in search of the
old fellow, but it was not until the after-
noon that he put in an appearance. I
found him clearing away some of the
fallen leaves, mumbling to himself, as
was his custom.

He was very old, but somehow he
gave one the impression of being much
older than he really was. Casually I
got into conversation with the old chap,
although he seemed uncommonly re-
luctant to talk about anything; my
tentative enquiry about a summer-
house, however, had an effect that was
almost startling.

“Summer-house?” he echoed, eyeing
me queerly. “Summer-house, did you
say? Are you mad?” then after a
pause: “There’s been no such thing
here for nigh on fifty years ”

And mumbling to himself he moved
away as though resentful of my pre-
sence. I suddenly decided to tell this
old man of my adventure of the night

before. I said nothing of the rose, but
his reactions to my account of the girl
in white struck me as being most
peculiar.

In a moment all his resentment had
gone; he regarded me with an expres-
sion which I can only describe as a
strange mature of suspicion and doubt.
When at length he spoke his voice was
an almost inaudible whisper.

“So you’ve seen her, too . . . you saw
her . . . last night . . . strange . . .
strange . . .” He broke off; I was
amazed.

“You know her then?” I asked, “you
know who she is?” In his voice when
he replied there was a world of wist-
fulness.

the gardener’s story

“Yes . . . Yes, I
know her ... I’ve
seen her too . . .”
he murmured; then
his voice strength-
ened.

“Listen, young
man, and I will tell
you of something of which I have never
spoken before. You alone beside my-
self have been fated to see the vision of
the garden — you alone shall hear her
story . . .

“Very many years ago there lived in
this house one William Ramos, a man
well known and respected in the neigh-
bourhood. He had a son, a young
fellow named Armand. He was hand-
some, gay and loved by all who knew
him; but none loved him so well as did
Louise. Louise, delicate and sweet as
any flower yet, full of a wild, strong
passion.

“In her wistful beauty Armand
found the answer to his fondest
dreams. Seldom it is that the dreams
of youth are destined to anything but
sorry disillusionment; but to Armand
she was the incarnation of desire. Day
by day she grew and blossomed into
the promise of radiant womanhood.

ARMAND’S RETURN

and in her infinite loveliness was all of
woman he would ever need to ask.

“To Louise, Armand was a shrine
at which she gladly worshipped; his
lightest word of praise a bounty of de-
light, his slightest affectation of re-
proach a thing to grieve about. To-
gether they found a happiness that few
could hope to find; a thing too fine, too
delicate long to endure the harshness
of this relentless world.

“This garden was their trysting-
place; every night they met beneath the
roses and the moon. In the seclusion of
the garden their love strengthened and
grew into a thing beautiful beyond
words. But lasting happiness, it seems,
is not for mortals such as we; a glimpse
and that is all of ecstasy.

“So it came about that the monstrous
iron hand of fate reached out and shat-
tered the happiness of Armand and
Louise; at one fell stroke destroyed
this youthful idyll, irreparably and for
ever. It began with a lovers’ quarrel;
nothing more.

“Armand, hot-headed and impulsive
as was his nature, went off to the war
which then was raging in far Afghanis-
tan. Some two months later came the
report of his death — he had been killed
in an ambush. Louise was distracted,
frantic with grief, inconsolable, for
sadly she held herself to blame for this
stark tragedy.

“Stricken with sorrow and remorse,
ceaselessly she grieved for Armand,
whom she would never see again. At
nights she would come to this garden
so full of memories for her and wander
distractedly among the roses. She
pined and would not be comforted; it
was feared she would lose her reason.

“But her frail nature could not for
long withstand this cruel blow; soon
she died. Died with grief. They found
her early one morning in the summer-
house at the bottom of the garden.”

The old man paused, gazing into an

55

incalculable distance; presently he con-
tinued:

“But her unresting spirit lingers on
within that garden of shadows. Often
at this time of the year she returns to
walk again beneath the roses . . .”

The aged gardener was silent for a
moment; his eyes were remote, in-
scrutable. It was almost with reluct-
ance that he continued with his narra-
tive.

“And then that blind unreasoning
thing that men call the irony of fate
stepped in, malevolent and evil. Not
long after the passing of Louise there
came an official message contradicting
the report of the death of Armand
Ramos. A case of mistaken identity;
they regretted any inconvenience which
may have been caused.

But there was little rejoicing in the
house of Armand’s father. And when
he returned so full of joyous anticipa-
tion, Armand found an empty garden,
a garden bereft of Louise and there-
fore without ecstasy, without reason.
Without Louise his life held no signifi-
cance. He went away again and
travelled to the ends of the earth to
escape his inward remorse.

“Years later he returned, to find his
father’s house in strange hands; he
went to live near-by. But none knew
of the return of Armand. . . . There
was little that had not changed with
the passing of the years; only the
garden of the roses remained the same.
To be near this garden of memories
now became his one desire. . . .”

The old man broke off with the air
of one who has confided too much in
someone who after all was a stranger.
Then suddenly a strange suspicion
came to me; a great compassion over-
came me, so that for a moment I could
not speak. And his eyes made answer
as I murmured:

“Armand Ramos — I will keep your
secret. . . .”

The Furry Goblin of Lychpole
Hill

F able of the Farm and the Lady

by R. THURSTON HOPKINS

F IELD archzeology — the digging-
up of prehistoric burial-mounds,
hill forts and flint mines has in it
a certain speculative flavour. You have
before you a symmetrical earth-mound,
like a gigantic mole-hill. It is the
burial - place of some prehistoric
warrior. Three thousand years have
passed since some tribe piled the earth
over their chieftain with shovels made
from the shoulder-blades of oxen. The
mound may contain secrets of human
culture and understanding which have
been hidden since 1900 b . c .; it may
contain cunningly shaped flint arrow-
heads and axes, it may even reveal to
the delighted eyes of the digger gold
ornaments and jewellery of stupendous
historic importance.

It was perhaps the hope of some
discovery that made Major Pitt-Grim-
shaw such a frequent attendant at all
the field-work operations of the Devon
and Cornwall Archaeological Society —
that hope, and also, maybe, because he
was a rich man without any other
hobby, and without a surplus of energy
to drive him to seek more arduous pas-
times.

“I have a fancy,” he said over his
coffee, “that the mound we are opening
up on Lychpole Hill is holding some
great surprise for us. There is a tradi-
tion around Lychpole that the mound
covers the remains of a Bronze Age
witch-doctor.”

“It’s about time something exciting
happened,” said Margery — who was his

THE FURRY GOBLIN OF LYCHPOLE HILL

daughter and also mistress of the house.
“The last mound we opened did not
offer any special thrills. I believe our
loot was a cigar-box full of old pottery
which looked like broken gramophone
records.”

“To-day,” continued the Major,
after a pause, “we are going to dig up
those old ramparts about fifty feet
south-west of the mound. It is said
that beneath the turf at this spot we
shall find the foundations of a heathen
temple.”

“Would that be the temple used by
the devil worshippers you told me of
the other day?” asked Margery, as she
filled his cup.

“Yes,” he said, “but, of course, it is
all guess-work. We can only find the
truth by digging.”

Major Pitt-Grimshaw became medi-
tative over a piece of toast.

“Well,” remarked Margery, “even if
the Devil himself popped out of your
mound, it would provide some excite-
ment in Salmonsbury. We’re cold
mutton out here — you and I. Nothing
ever happens. Other women get all the
fun.

“There is that girl Esther Steyning —
on Monday she knocked down the
policeman on point duty; on Wednes-
day she won the dancing competition
at the Church Hall; on Friday her
cousin arrived home from Borneo and
gave her a pet snake. What a lovely
week of excitement!”

“Cheer up, Margery,” said the
Major, round the end of a piece of
toast. “I’ll come home to-night and
bring you a Rolls-Royce or a yacht,
if you want it. Not many girls can ex-
pect more than that.”

“I know, Daddy — you are the best
father in the world, and I know I have
only just got to wish for anything that
money can buy, and I get it. Still . . .
there are other things. No man ever
looks at me; no one wants to take me
to a dance or a theatre — except those
hangers-on who are after your money.”

You might have thought Margery

57

was a woman of forty, but as a matter
of fact, she wijs only thirty. Her com-
plexion was dark and gave one the
impression that it was frequently
scrubbed with yellow soap; her nose
had never been powdered since those
days when, as an infant, she had been
“finished off” with a giant puff after the
morning bath. Her black hair was un-
tidy and always seemed to be escaping
from the possession of fortuitous hair-
pins. She was gruff, shy and awkward.
One of those kind of women you
couldn’t possibly fall in love with; no
one could ever have fallen in love with
her. And it must be admitted that
Margery had never had the remotest
idea of falling in love with anybody.

And yet it must be confessed that she
was not an ugly woman; she had good
regular features, rather a nice nose and
white gleaming teeth. Possibly it was
her curious taste in clothes which made
her appear such an odd figure. She
dressed, habitually, in any old jumper,
any old skirt, and any old hat. When
her figure, which, as women acquaint-
ances often remarked, was really an
excellent one, was hidden by a straight,
shapeless raincoat, the people of Sal-
monsbury might be pardoned for re-
garding her less as a woman than a
human being who, somehow or other,
had just escaped being a man.

EXCAVATION

Margery, from the vantage point of
a steep slope on Lychpole Hill, wit-
nessed the opening up of the mound.
Operations were begun by cutting a
trench across the centre of the earth-
work. Soon the spades struck against
rough-hewn stones set in a curious
black mortar.

Upon examination, the stones proved
to be the head of a circular stainvay
leading down to a subterranean cham-
ber. The stairway was blocked with
the accumulated rubble and earth of
two thousand years. The archeologists

58

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

settled down to two hours’ digging and
Margery settled down to smoke a
cigarette and read a novel.

After the shingle and gravel was
cleared out of the well of the stairway
the diggers found a deposit of black
earth and earthenware pots of Roman
date.

“Well, Margery!” said the Major, as
he settled down beside her for a rest in
between digging, “I knew something
would happen to-day. That soil” — he
pointed to a heap of black sandy earth
— “is composed of ashes from the altar
of the temple. There can be but little
doubt that the barbaric practice of
human sacrifice was performed in the
temple.” The Major’s eyes shone ex-
citedly. “To think that we may be on
the verge of opening up a British
Temple over two thousand years old!”

It was slow work digging out the
earth in the subterranean chamber, and
Margery, tired of reading, decided to
wander along the terrace-way running
along the side of Lychpole Hill. Sud-
denly she stopped dead, and remained
as rigid as if she had just awakened
from a nightmare.

“My sorrow!” she exclaimed. And,
again, slowly, almost in a whisper: “My
. . . sorrow! ”

The exclamations had been called
forth by something which she had seen
bounding up the steps of the heathen
temple. It was a black figure and yet
rather an indistinct figure, and it had
bounced away up the side of Lychpole
Hill with amazing fleetness — with
devilish fleetness.

But to her the most curious thing
about the figure was the fact that the
legs were covered with light brown fur.
There was something about the motions
of those furry legs which made Margery
cover her eyes and run screaming to
her father, who was just climbing out
of the stairway.

“What in the world is the matter
with you? What have you been doing?
What have you seen?” the Major
shouted.

“It was something which jumped out
of the stairway before you came up . . .
A figure like a man: but,” Margery
searched for a definition, “it wasn’t a
man. It was like a large monkey.”

A word as to the nature of this “large
monkey.” He was of the regions of
. faerie — a goblin who had been im-
prisoned in the heathen temple. Of
course, he was much older than the
temple, for he had lived with tribes
who, tens of thousands of years before,
had hunted the hippopotamus and the
great extinct elephants up and down the
river valleys of England.

As soon as the archeologists had
opened up the temple he had rushed
up the steps, and raced over Lychpole
Hill to the town of Salmonsbury. Here
he had snatched an overcoat from a
tailor’s dummy and streaked along to
Woolpit House, the residence of Major
Pitt-Grimshaw. A few minutes later he
was biding in a cupboard in Margery’s
bedroom.

“A NICE RESPECTABLE GOBLIN”

“W h o are
you — and
what do you
want?” said
Margery. She
gazed at t h e
figure i n a
horrid p e r-
plexity. She
pulled the bed-
clothes over
her, for any idea of getting out of bed
and passing the figure was intolerable
to her.

“I’m a goblin, miss,” he mumbled.
“But I’m a kind and respectable goblin.
Please don’t scream, miss.”

He fell on his knees with a supplicat-
ing look on his small impish face.

Margery, at the words, lifted the
sheet from her face and looked intently
at the goblin.

“You came out of the heathen temple

THE FURRY GOBLIN OF LYCHPOLE HILL

this afternoon. You gave me a dreadful
fright.”

“Yes,” said the goblin. “I’ve been
locked up in that foul pit for two
thousand years.”

“But why don’t you live with all the
other goblins and demons?” asked
Margery.

“It’s like this, my lady. I’m one of
the goblins who got left behind when
our people fled from England ever so
many years ago. Now nobody will own
me. Neither my own people down be-
low or the humans above the earth
want me. What I want is sympathy and
help. I want somebody to take me as a
servant. That would change my condi-
tion for me, and I might gradually be-
come a real human being. With a decent
suit of clothes and a shave I could
easily pass in a crowd. I don’t look too
bad in this overcoat — do I?”

Margery’s heart was beating like a
drum, but her sense of pity was stronger
than her fear now that the goblin ap-
peared so meek and mild.

“But I have a maid of my own and
our household is over-staffed at pre-
sent,” said Margery kindly.

“Forget that I’m not a human, my
lady,” the goblin continued in a most
beseeching voice. “Forget that I’ve got
furry legs and do a brave and kind
thing 1 Oh, do let me be your servant.
I’m clever: so very clever. I can do all
kinds of marvellous tricks. I can make
you famous, envied, admired. I can
embroider bedroom slippers or take
you for a joy-ride on a rainbow.”

“Indeed?” said Margery. “But
Mr. . . .”

“My name is Hako, my lady.”

“But, Hako,” said Margery, her
warm brown eyes turned on him, “can
you make me beautiful? That’s a test
for you.”

Hako blinked, and made a gesture
with his furry arms. “But, my lady,
you are beautiful,” he said.

“Oh!” said Margery. “Now I know
that you’re a wicked goblin. No one in

59

the world who was not a humbug would
call me beautiful.”

But it must be confessed that Mar-
gery’s heart warmed a little to the
goblin. No woman in the world can
hear even a goblin say “You are beauti-
ful” without feeling a thrill of satisfac-
tion.

“I must think the matter over,” she
announced.

“Oh, my lady,” cried Hako, “decide
now. Don’t leave me in suspense. Look I
I’ll show you what a clever servant I
am. Say to me, ‘Go’.”

Margery said the word, and the
goblin whisked round and vanished in
thin air and hi3 overcoat dropped on
the floor.

“Hi! Hako . . . don’t go . . .” cried
Margery.

Hako flashed back again and stood
on the hearth-rug.

“I’ll engage you for a month on
trial,” said Margery. “You can com-
mence your duties now. Provided your
magic is satisfactory, you can have a
home here for the rest of your — ah,
existence. Now show me some of your
best magic. Change me into a beauti-
ful blonde cinema star.”

“Ah, now you baffle me," said Hako.
“I cannot transform human beings.
That can only be done by fairies. But,”
he added, seeing that he had damped
Margery’s hopes of becoming a blonde
beauty, “I am an adept at all trades
and professions; I am cunning; I am
swift; and I can become invisible and
stay so for long periods.”

“Well, how do you propose to help
me? I’ll leave it all to you.”

HAIRDRESSER

“Well,” said Hako, “I’m a perfect
wonder at ladies’ hairdressing — let me
arrange your hair. When the Romans
landed in Britain I worked as a ladies’
hairdresser around the Roman Villas of
Salmonsbury. There was not much that
the Roman ladies did not know about

do

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

home beauty treatment — they had their
skin tonics, creams, powders and lip-
sticks just as you have them to-day.”

At that moment Hako vanished. He
flashed like a silver arrow through walls
and houses to a ladies’ hairdressing
establishment and returned swiftly with
a full set of hairdresser’s implements.
Next moment he had bobbed, brushed,
burnished, curled, waved and permed
Margery’s hair.

“There,” said Hako, handing a look-
ing-glass to her. “Look at yourself
row!”

Margery looked and her reflection
almost took her breath away. She burst
forth with cries of surprise and admira-
tion. Her hair looked impossibly
beautiful.

“Oh, thank you, Hako. You are
simply marvellous,” she gasped.

“Just a little thing — you’re welcome,
I’m sure,” mumbled Hako. “And if I
might be allowed to say so — just a
little of this Roman face-cream. I pre-
pared it myself from snakes’ liver and
moon-beams. There! Now a touch of
lipstick . . . Splendid!”

The glass was passed to Margery a
second time.

“Oh, Hako!” she cried. “This is real
magic — I’m not as beautiful as that. I
must be dreaming.”

Her voice held a new, uncontrollable
quiver.

Up to this time nobody had wanted
to marry Margery. Even her father’s
money did not attract anybody whom
she looked upon with favour. The belle
of the town was Millie Fane. Men
swarmed around her like flies around a
honey-pot. Therefore Millie was as
much annoyed as surprised when Mar-
gery walked in the little local club — it
was held over the Lido Picture Palace —
and boldly flaunted her new-found
beauty.

Hako had insisted on h.er buying a
smart-tailored two-piece suit, a spotted
shantung blouse in tobacco brown and
white and brown tie shoes. And, oh,
boy I did she look swell I Hako’s Roman

cream had worked wonders. As the skin
food advertisements say, it had “be-
stowed the thrilling loveliness of youth”
on her.

Margery sailed up to John Chorring-
ton — whom it must be explained was
both handsome and much chased by the
ladies of the club — and said:

“Do buy me a cocktail, John. I’ve
been told that when one feels in form,
a cocktail puts one in top form. Funny,
this will be the first time in my life I’ve
ever tasted a cocktail.”

For the first and only time on record
did John Chorrington lose his natural
grace of manner. For a perceptible in-
stant he stood stock still and stared
open-mouthed. . . .

Margery adroitly shepherded Chor-
rington into a corner of the cocktail-
bar and soon they were seated on a
divan chatting and laughing. Millie
Fane had the chagrin to see Chorring-
ton's politely bored face gradually
lighting up with reawakened interest.

For the next few days Margery en-
joyed a triumph. She was always the
centre of the little coterie at the Lido
Club. Men and women crowded round
her. She found herself talking on all
kinds of subjects with dash and assur-
ance. All her pent-up emotions, long-
ings, laughter of years burst forth like
sparkling cascades in the sunlight.
Chorrington, now never far away from
her, was amazed to discover how sweet
was her smile and how dazzling was the
gleam of her strong white teeth. She
had hardly ever ridden a horse, but
now almost daily she was a dashing
figure astride with some cavalier in
attendance.

“I notice the ladies are playing the
officers of the Loamshire Regiment at
cricket,” said Hako a few days later.
“You must offer to play, my lady. You
must hold your own in all sporting and
social events.”

“No — oh no, Hako,” replied Margery
quickly. “I’m a duffer at sports.”

“Go and put your name down — I’ll
do the rest.” Hako smiled a quiet

THE FURRY GOBLIN OF LYCHPOLE HILL 61

superior smile. “You just swipe at the
ball and the invisible Hako will sock it
for you.”

LADY ATHLETE

Margery,
rigged up in
cricket flannels,
drove up to the
ground with the
Major.

“Pinch m e.
Pinch me
hard,” Millie
Fane whis-
pered to Chor-
rington. “That
Pitt-Grimshaw woman is going to have
the cheek to play cricket. Why, she’s
about as agile as an elephant, and a
duffer at tennis and any other outdoor
sport."

But when Margery walked out to
bat, the people of Salmonsbury beheld
a Margery they had never seen before.
It was a Margery in faultless white
flannel blouse and trousers. Margery
with smooth clear olive skin and shin-
ing black hair; Margery erect, proud,
smiling, her strong face illuminated by
eyes a-glitter with suppressed excite-
ment. She faced the bowler with con-
fidence and drove the first ball through
the covers. Margery and her partner
crossed twice.

There was a roar of appreciation
from the lads and girls of Salmonsbury.

“Well hit, Miss!”

“Fluke I” said Millie Fane.

The next ball was a scorcher, and
Margery did well to stop it. But the
next delivery pitched a trifle short. She
opened her shoulders and smacked the
ball to the bpundary.

“Hurrah!” The air was rent with
cheering.

The game went on and so did Mar-
gery’s hitting. She smacked the bowl-
ing all over the field, and it must be
admitted, was blessed with astonishing
good luck. On two occasions the ball

came off the edge of her bat, and was
nearly held in the slips. But fortune
smiled on Margery, and her score rose
merrily, until it stood at forty-nine.

There was a shout from the pavilion.

“Only one more for your half century
— stick itl”

Margery looked round and dis-
covered that the voice came from John
Chorrington.

Margery went on batting, rather
more recklessly now. She piled her
score up to sixty-eight, the din of
Salmonsbury cheers ringing in her ears
every time she slogged the ball. At last,
she lunged forward wildly, and there
was an ominous clatter behind her.

The middle stump was flat!

It was a merry party of dancers that
assembled in the Lido Club that eve-
ning to celebrate Margery’s sensational
debut as a cricketer.

Margery smiled on Millie Fane:

“Hello, Millie darling. Pity you were
bowled by the first ball — but Mr.
Barnaby is a crafty bowler. But, dear,
you’re looking pale to-night — quite
fagged you looked, I hope there’s
nothing the matter.”

She turned round quickly, leaving
Millie speechless with indignation, and
as she did so John Chorrington took
her arm:

“Come along Margery,” he said,
“and have a cocktail. Your batting was
too magnificent for words. But why
have you been keeping it so dark? Why
did you make fools of all the rest of
us?”

That night Margery went to bed, but
she could not sleep. She felt an im-
poster. It worried her to think that she
would be a failure without Hako’s
magic. Besides, she thought, only
witches made agreements with sprites
and goblins. And suppose Hako should
run away and leave her. She could
never face her friends in Salmonsbury
without him.

She had a headache; such a head-
ache: a thunder and lightning head-
ache!

62

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

In the cold morning light, common-
place things crowded in on Margery,
and our heroine found her visions
fading. Hako’s teachings were fan-
tastic, dangerous. Before she had
finished dressing, she was inclined to
shun all these extravagant dreams and
continue to keep to her straight, if ex-
tremely monotonous, path.

“that’s the spirit”

She picked up one of her frowsy
skirts to put on: but she could not bring
herself to wear the horrible and shape-
less garment. She kicked it across the
floor and jumped on it.

“That’s the spirit!” grinned Hako,
who suddenly appeared with a large
box under his arm. He opened it and
displayed a fascinating three-piece suit
with striped jumper and big dashing
bow.

“Accept this, my lady,” Hako said.
“I spent my last penny on it, the skirt
is tailored for a heavenly fit. You will
look a perfect angel in it.”

“No, Hako,” said Margery sadly,
“don’t tempt me any more. I can’t go
on with this pretence. I feel such an
imposter. But that game of cricket was
grand fun." Margery’s eyes shone
hungrily. “It was thrilling to be in the
limelight for once and to be beautiful
and brilliant and joyous.”

Hako smiled and surveyed Margery
with his head on one side, as he picked
his pointed teeth with a spine from a
blackthorn.

“You just tumble into that suit, my
lady. You’ll make a hit in that. Don’t

you worry your head about my magic.”

“But I do worry,” said Margery.
Her voice was thick and low.

“There’s no need to,” answered
Hako, “because it isn’t magic. You
see, there’s no doubt you are beautiful,
and no doubt you can play cricket.”

“Hako, you little villain, are you try-
ing to tell me that this new ‘me’ ” — she
pointed to her attractive reflection in
the cheval glass — “is not all magic?”

Hako smiled and nodded his head.

Margery stared at him.

“Do you mean to say you didn’t hit
up those rims for me and do you mean
to tell me you didn’t change my hair
and complexion by magic?”

“Yes, I do mean to tell you that, my
lady.” He chuckled. “I did not even
go as far as the cricket-field with you,
and as for that magical Roman com-
plexion cream, I got that at Mr.
Peppercorn’s shop in High Street. It
cost one shilling and a halfpenny.”

“That’s a relief,” cried Margery.

With that, Hako vanished respect-
fully.

Margery carefully collected up all
her mangey old jumpers and skirts and
threw them out of her window. Attired
in the new suit with striped jumper and
dashing bow, she stood before the
cheval-glass all of a-tremble, excited
and bewildered.

A short while afterwards her maid,
Eliza, came in with the bundle of
clothes she had thrown out of the
window.

“I found all your things on the lawn,
ma’am. What shall I do with them?”

“Burn ’em,” said Margery, as she
flourished her lipstick.

Arachne

On the Road to the Valley of Blue Diamonds

by FREDERICK GRAVES

OU want the whole story?”

“Yes. I have heard so many
versions of the thing — all of
which you say are mainly imaginary,
the products of the mercurial minds of
the reporters, who tried to get the real
thing and were disappointed — that I
really would like to have the true ver-
sion. It must have been an extraordin-
ary affair.”

“Well, it was that all right. . . . I’ll
tell you, as you are so persistent; but
be it on your own head. You have
asked for it and you shall have it; but I
have warned you it is nasty 1”

Crane muttered something more or
less incoherent about the credulity of
the public, as he filled his pipe.

“Some of ’em will believe anything,
but the funny thing is that here is a
real live story, yet the few to whom I
have given even the mere skeleton,
smirk in such an irritating way I could
knock their beastly heads off. They
plainly don’t believe a word of it.”

But after a little more grumbling and
subterranean moralising he got under
way and thereafter I made no attempt
to interrupt him. . . .

“As you know, certain little things
leaked out — though I refused all inter-
views. (Lord! one chap was so per-
sistent he even got at me in the bath!
He went off a lot quicker than he came
up! And, if I am any judge of life, he
still bears the mark of the boot I sent
after him!) Yes, a few details got out
and they built up all sorts of queer
tales on ’em. The Daily Sun produced
the biggest lie of its flaming career in

search of truth. But they none of ’em
told the full and true story because I
was the only poor devil who came back
with the news. . . .

“My lecture at the Royal dealt only
with the geological and biological re-
sults of the expedition. As you know
we found no gold and as for the famous
valley of diamonds that the natives
have for generations told of — well, the
reason we did not explore it lies in the
tale I am about to tell you — and you
will, I think, understand! . . .

“What my friends of Fleet Street
would have made of the true story
heaven only knows. I would probably
have been fated till I busted or — have
been lynched! . . .

“Now for it! You can keep it to
yourself or make use of it. I’m off
again — to Central America this time,
as you know, next week, and don’t care
what happens now. Only — won’t those
chaps in Fleet Street yefi if you do use
it! My Gad, they’ll slit your throat if
they get at you! . . .

“Well, now I’ll really start. . . .”
Though he paused again to stretch out a
languid hand for the glass of fire-water
at his elbow, as though he felt he
needed just a nip to fortify him in the
recital. He imbibed slowly and thought-
fully. Feeling refreshed, presumably,
he lay back and started in earnest.

“I have been in some funny places,
deserts, forests, swamps, snows, and,
believe me, there are still weird things
to be found in this world. I have come
across a few that they would never
have believed at the Royal if I had

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

64

described them. But I think this was
about the worst experience anyone
could have.

“There were four of us you know,
and we got up the Antoxyl river as far
as we could into the borders of Peru.
We had heard of the mysterious valley
of blue diamonds that was said to lie
high up in the rugged volcanic rocks
and pinnacles that towered above the
dense forest beyond the rushing cas-
cades of the upper torrents that fell to
and fed the Atoxyl, and eventually the
Yavery, that runs to the Upper
Amazon.

“After we left the boat, Manders,
myself and our two Indians, we had to
fairly cut our way step by step through
the intense undergrowth of the jungle.
It was slow work and the heat terrific.
We could only do about a mile a day
and it was uphill, over the roughest of
volcanic, tufa, broken and sharp as a
razor.

“Overhead the dense forest; through
gaps here and there the sun beat down
and it was just like doing hard labour
in an over-heated conservatory among
a smother of tropical plants tied up
with masses of toughest lianas. . . .

“Lad, I tell you there is much to be
said for the civilisation we growl so
much about at times I There have been
moments when I would have given my
life for a nip like this and a whiff of
good ’baccy. As for the former — to
have got drunk, dead drunk, dead in-
deed! But, however . . .

“In a way we had achieved the object
of the expedition and for which the
society sent us out — or at least found
no boodle — we had proved that there
was no gold in such amounts as would
pay for working and transport from
such an out-of-the-way part of the
world. But it was that fairy legend of
the valley of the blue diamonds that
lured us on.

“We had braved the dangers of the
rapids, the serpents, the pirrhanas in
the water, the fevers, and even the
terrible hostile tribes we had been

warned against. We had one or two
conflicts with spear heaving, arrow-
shooting foes, but managed to survive
these. But we went on and with every
mile the going got worse. There was
one little thing that helped us and gave
a little hope — as we rose, but by bit, we
got into a cooler atmosphere and, when
we came to a gap in the jungle, we were
able to get a breath of mountain air.

A GLIMPSE OF THE GOAL

Once we caught
just a glimpse of
the far-off sunlit
crimson crags o f
the range towards
which we were
labor iously and
very slowly work-
ing. There lay our goal and — what!
Would we get there? Would we find
the treasure? Would we return — with
our lives, or would we leave our bones
to bleach on those arid heights, as the
natives had assured us others had
done?”

“Indians had gone there, or tried to
get to the peaks, but had never re-
turned they said. They said a good
deal more — unpleasant things that we
pretended not to hear or just put down
to native superstition; one thing struck
Manders and myself as peculiarly
horrible.

“I won’t tell you — yet. We didn’t
believe it, but all the same it made a
queer creepy impression on us both.

“But, oh Lord! I tell you I would
never have believed such heat existed
on earth. I have been lost in the
Sahara — that was nothing to the stuffy
suffocation of this mountain jungle!
There are times when I wake up in the
night in such a welter of sweat —
pooh! . . .

“I began to worry about poor
Manders, he kept getting a touch of
fever and we had to stop for a time,
though it was most important to get
him on and higher into purer air. That

ARACHNE 6s

delayed us. The fever got its fangs into
me also, and the quinine was nearly
gone, and I began to wonder whether
we were not just about done, and might
as well lie down and die there as a bit
farther on.

“Then Jo-Jo told us of a new and
shorter path, though it was almost as
precipitous as a church steeple.

“Suddenly, we were out of the forest
and upon a high plateau that went
sheer down on three sides to the boil-
ing river that seemed a million miles
below. Lord! how we squatted and in-
haled the mountain air!

“All at once we felt as though we
had come up to the surface from a sub-
marine volcano or a fiery coal-mine,
from hades in fact to heaven! We felt
that there was such a thing after all as
life, and that it was worth living. We
could go on and conquer 1

“And on we went, scrambling over
that rough volcanic tufa towards the
high cleft in the towering peaks before
us. It was fairly cool up there, after
the oven below, and the only thing that
bothered us now was a curious unrest
we could not fail to notice about our
two bearers. The nearer we approached
the mountains the more hesitant and
uneasy they became.

“At the end of the first evening, as
Manders and I lay watching the
crimson glow on those strange
peaks, Jo-Jo gradually made me
acquainted, in his queer mixture of
Araquaise, Spanish and English, that at
the next camp they would reluctantly
be compelled to leave us.

“They would, however, he ventured
graciously to explain, wait for us at the
foot of the pass. I argued a little, but
it was useless I could see to try to move
them.

“Their minds were fixed and both he
and Pteroquia (of the rat’s face) made
it clear that there were strong and
spiritual reasons why they could not
be expected to penetrate the far
mountains. Indeed, they hinted more
or less directly, if delicately, that no

reasonable being (much less a stupid
white man and an Englishman), would
ever dream of trying to force respect-
able Indians of their peculiar persuasion
to go into a land that was forbidden by
their gods, and the entrance to which
would certainly be visited upon them
(and very possibly their companions
also) by the most appalling and quite
unmentionable reprisals.

“So there it was, and the next night
as we camped, as it seemed, quite
close to the forbidding ramparts, tire
two faithful servitors were evidently
making their preparations, not only for
a sit-down, but, as Manders expressed
it — a bunk! They had had enough of
it and we were perfectly certain that as
soon as our backs were turned they
would retrace their steps. We could
understand in a way, for it was quite
evident they were not only uneasy
under the shadow of the mountains, but
in actual fear, since their presence so
near to the gods (or whatever the evil
powers were) had given them the
jitters and they were itching to be off.

“Well, it would not so much matter.
The stores were by now reduced to just
what we could carry ourselves, and
even if we lost them altogether the loss
would not be serious; and at the
worst we could find our way back to the
river even if we just tumbled down!
We would perhaps find an old canoe
somewhere or manage to make a raft
with bamboos and lianas. . . .

“ ‘I say, do you think we have lost
the track?’ Manders asked me once, as
we paused next day on a curious ridge
after leaving the camp and taking fare-
well of our bearers — who, we could see,
were hard put to restrain their desire
that we should get on quickly and give
them the chance to bolt.

“ ‘We seem to be going down
again.’ ”

“ ‘No, I think we are right. Seel
There is an opening in the cliffs!’

“It was a desolate burnt-up land,
with no trace of any vegetation; even
the desert lichens that seem able to

66

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

linger anywhere had been burned up as
with a blast of flame at some remote
age. After the luxuriant tropic jungle,
it was strange indeed.

“But, curiously, there was one thing
we noticed, and it had a curious affect
on us both — one I cannot describe.
With every step we took we noticed that
there was one sign of life — the spider.
An extraordinary number of these
creatures seemed to be appearing from
every stone and cranny, and to grow
both in numbers and size as we went
on.

“I have a dislike of spiders in spite
of the fact that as a naturalist I have
collected specimens of every kind of
creature for the museums. And as for
Manders — he is one of those people
who get the creeps badly at the sight
of one. But we went on, ever onwards.

“The mysterious mountains of the
blue diamonds were in front, and we
had come too far and risked and
braved too many things to turn and
funk the business. I wished at times
we had had another companion or two.
It was rather a lonely sort of job just
the two of us. But we shuddered a
good many times when we saw extra-
sized gentlemen (or ladies) of the
arachnoid order shoggling away to
their crannies.

“I began to have some inkling as to
the feelings of the respectable Jo-Jo
and his pal. They knew a thing or two !
I must confess I did not much relish the
idea of camping in those parts, but as
the light began to fail we found a bit of
stony hollow that had a cave that
seemed to be fairly free of the crawlers,
and so we scraped some scrub and lit a
small fire, boiled our coffee and
munched our biscuit. There was a
spring of water and that made up for
much. We were burning with thirst
and had been looking for one all day.

THE MONSTER

"Just as the light was going Manders
roused me by uttering an exclamation

that was startling in the great silence
of that rocky place. I started up in
alarm.

“He was raised on his elbow, staring
hard at something; then he pointed
with shaking finger towards the darker
interior of the cavern. I stared hard,
following the direction of his finger, and
as my eyes became more accustomed to
the gloom I saw there was a cleft in the
rock, and protruding from the cleft
something that moved and quivered.

“‘Lord save us! What is it?’ I
gasped. Manders did not answer, but
his lips made a curious sound that
seemed to indicate intense aversion,
mingled with disgust.

“As I watched another object came
down and I could see then that the two
things were the long hairy legs of some
monstrous creature of the spider tribe.
But — that could not be a spider! It
must be a huge land crab! Yet, a
moment later, as we watched, spell-
bound and fascinated, there was
another movement and part of the
beastly creature’s body came into view,
and poor as the light was, we could see
it was a giant spider.

“‘Heavens! What an appalling
brute ! ’ Manders hissed. What are we
to do? Shoot it — or lie and be
devoured?’

“As we gazed the creature suddenly
moved forward and at such a rate it
seemed to be upon us with a bound.
Instinctively I must, without knowing
it, have had my revolver in my hand
and I fired. What happened, beyond
the fact that we evidently settled the
thing, I do not know. We lost no time
in getting outside the cave, and we
made another little fire in the open and
stayed there, though neither of us got
any sleep, and we were pretty glad to
see the red of the dawn.

“We entered the cave later, when the
light was good and took a look at what
was left of the victim. But we soon
emerged into the open again, sickened,
for the thing we had, probably luckily

ARACHNE

for us, slain, was a gigantic king spider
as big as a mastiff.

“After that we went on in a some-
what sombre and distinctly sobered
mind. I need hardly say we did not
sing blithely to the morn. But we were
going to see the business through. We
had not come all that way to turn and
go back without some idea regarding
those blue diamonds. And we were
close to the last cliffs now, in which
we could see a great rift that must be
the fabulous valley.

“It was queer work edging round
that slope to the rift. We had come
right out again over the torrent, a sheer
drop to the river.

“ ‘Nice spot for a dive!’ Manders,
with grim humour, muttered once as he
peered down, then drew carefully back.

“Once we came upon the remains of
a human skeleton. Probably there was
some truth in the tale Jo-Jo had told
one night — I supposed in order to
frighten us — that the people who ven-
tured into yonder mountains were
bitten by some terrible and vengeful
gods and died in awful agony. Had
this adventurer been bitten by one of
the spiders? Perhaps, for we came on
two more skeletons later.

“But we knew we were nearing our
goal. Yonder lay the rift we sought,
and it could not be more than a few
miles to reach it, only that the going
was so toilsome and tortuous over
those broken slabs of rock.

“Towards evening the sky became
overcast, and it seemed as though one
of the terrible thunderstorms threat-
ened, so that we began to keep an eye
open for a likely shelter. Lightning
would be unpleasant in that rocky
neighbourhood, with its streaks of
glistening pyrites here and there.

“We were entering a rocky defile, and
we noticed a great increase in the
spiders; evidently we were entering their
kingdom, and I thought to myself, ‘if
these pests grow much bigger as we go
on, and more numerous, goodness
knows what is to become of us!’ One

67

could scarcely help treading them under-
foot, and they scuttled away on all
sides. Once or twice we caught sight
of such monsters as made us wince and
pause. All at once a gasping cry came
from Manders, who was toiling along
behind me.

“ Oh, for pity sake let us turn back
and get away from this accursed
place!” I turned round and saw that he
was struggling with what appeared to be
a cord stretched across his path, then I
saw that there were many of them all
round, like a maze of telephone wires.
At the same moment I tripped over
one of the cords and it took me some
seconds to extricate myself from the
ropy, sticky, elastic thing.

“They were stretched from rock to
rock and glancing round I saw that I
had only just escaped walking blindly
into a monster web. I got Manders
free, and we stood panting and look-
ing round, when we saw that the webs
were everywhere. Some of the cords
were so long they stretched right out
of sight, and they must have acted as
warners and telephones to the in-
habitants of that land of terrors, for
the spiders began to appear in greater
numbers from all quarters.

“The next moment I felt something
on my face and tore at it. I had gone
headlong, as I turned to move on, into
a mass of web.

‘“Look at that!’ Manders cried, at
the same time as he pointed to an
immense and perfect web that covered
a great chasm. ‘Suppose we got into
a thing like that! We would never get
out again. Oh, we cannot go on! We
must get back somehow!’

“It was at that moment, as we paused
again, that glancing up I caught sight
of a tremendous sheet of web, just seen
in the gloom that was settling round us.
A flash of lightning lit up the scene, and
then I saw that a monster spider was
sitting and swaying gently in the
middle of the thing. Floating filaments
filled the air and it was becoming diffi-
cult to breathe.

68

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

TRAGEDY

“What happened after that I hardly
know. It was all too horrible. The
storm burst and the place was all but in
darkness, except when the vivid flashes
came. I think for some moments we
plunged hither and thither, almost un-
conscious of what we were doing
beyond the one all-mastering desire to
get out of that terrible place somehow,
anyhow, anywhere.

“I trod on something horny that
slid from under my feet and nearly
threw me down, and at the same time
I was conscious of a cry from my com-
panion. I searched the gloom, but
could not see him. I had the feeling
that we were now indeed lost, and in a
region of appalling horror; that the
tragedy was fast working to its dread
climax. The cry came again and it was
heart-rending.

“Then came a flash and I caught
sight of a paralysing spectacle and
realised that Manders was caught in
one of the giant webs, struggling
desperately to free himself, and that a
monster spider was advancing upon
him . . .

“What then? I really hardly know,
but that I fired, frantically, recklessly.
I was out of my senses with fright and
horror. . . . God knows if I killed
Manders. If I did it was perhaps for
the best, for there was no chance of
rescue from that appalling thing that
closed upon him. Perhaps it is a terrible
thing to say, but I can only hope one
of my mad shots did for the two of
them. . . .

Then it seemed that hell was let
loose. In the almost continuous flickers
of the lightning I saw that the enemy
seemed to be pouring out upon me from
every quarter. Mad with horror, I
turned and fled — anywhere, stumbling
over the creatures and the rocks, I

caught a mad vision of millions of
scrambling hairy legs and bodies, some
of them monstrous, and how I missed
being seized and dragged down I can-
not imagine.

“Millions of dark bodies shambling
about and bobbing up and down, and
a myriad of horrible gleaming eyes.
I appeared to be plunging through a
world of clinging webs and restraining
strands, and all at once as a great flash
came, I realised I was on the brink of
the fearful precipice that hung at a
great altitude above the gorge where
the river ran about a mile below. . . .
I could not stop my headlong rush, and
there was the racing army at my heels.
Behind the horrors, before me the
abyss. . . .

“It seemed to me that I fell through
an eternity of time and space, and at
length there came the terrific plunge
Into an icy flood. ...

“No good asking me what happened
after that. I suppose I must have risen
to the surface in a pool below the falls
and caught at same overhanging liana.
Anyway I must have managed to pull
myself ashore, and there I lay more or
less unconscious till I came round in the
first light of the dawn, to find myself
baking and sweltering in the blaze of
the sun on a sandbank and with my
clothing dry as a bone.

“I stumbled later on a derelict dug-
out canoe, and managed to paddle it
down the rapids to quieter water.

“Eventually, I struck a native village
and, fortunately for me, they were
peaceful and kindly Indians, who fed
me and directed me through the jungle
to the main stream, where I was pro-
vided with a log boat.

“Yes, I got to the coast on a Portu-
guese river tramp and — home!

“There! You have got the tale now.
But you needn’t believe a word of it.
Probably you won’t. Please yourself 1*

✓-

The Psychic Typewriter

A Manifestation of Qhostly Detection

by JOHN WEST

“ 1 ''ROM times immemorial, the

H occult, or what we mere humans
with our finite intelligence term
the supernatural (simply because it is
above or beyond the natural scope of
our comprehensions) has had its par-
tisans. Some have been earnest seekers
after knowledge, others simply idly
curious. Yet another group have had
some knowledge suddenly thrust into
their consciousness following close upon
the loss of some relative or by some un-
usual occurrence which has come into
violent conflict with their ready-made
concepts of life and our connections
with mere physical laws.

“Often in this way, individuals who
have previously been extremely
sceptical of any ideas which were not
entirely materialistic, have been liter-
ally forced to admit the existence of
other intelligences amongst them, and
to accept, even against the weight of
normal scientific explanation, pheno-
mena explainable only by the applica-
tion of some law or combination of laws
at present outside the scope of our
ordinary reasoning powers.”

So spoke Dr. Young, who had been
drawn into a discussion on vibrations,
a discussion arising out of a chance re-
mark concerning a particularly good
wireless programme. Young, a keen
psychologist, spoke from the depths of
a high-backed leather arm-chair, where

he sprawled before the large and ornate
fireplace of a club in the heart ol the
West End. The month was November,
and the weather had contributed to the
universal desire to dine leisurely and
idle away an evening instead of rush-
ing off to a theatre.

Dr. Young’s fellow-clubmen were
three, who, up to this point, had listened
more or less intently to what was being
said. First, the Rev. James Storm, a
modern young man, always ready to
listen to and examine new theories, and
not too dogmatic about the principles
which he had been expected to accept
without question at his theological
College. In the corner, ever a good
listener, was a distinguished member
of Scotland Yard, usually very taciturn
concerning his personal activities at the
Yard.

The fourth member of this group was
Sir Sirgwishar Presad, a regular Hindu
visitor to town in connection with his
shipping business in Bombay in par-
ticular, and the Far East in general.
Sir Sirgwishar was a wealthy man,
came of a high and noble family and
was accepted in England by virtue of
his breeding and his standing in India.
He was a very popular member of the
club, his likeable personality and his
charming graciousness endearing him
to all with whom he came in contact.
He it was who interrupted the doctor

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

70

at this point, and asked, smiling in his
most disarming manner:

“And what connection has that with
vibrations?”

Young smiled, flicked the ash from
his cigar, and continued.

“Why, the Psychic investigator will
tell us that all of these so-called
phenomena can be explained when we
know sufficient about vibrations and
wave-lengths. He will explain that
different rates of vibration give rise to
different wave-lengths, and will use as
an illustration the modern wireless re-
ceiving set. Here, by the simple process
of turning a knob we can select a par-
ticular wave-length and invisibly con-
nect ourselves with a particular station.

“Not many years ago, such means
of communication would have been
deemed impossible, simply because
man’s knowledge of the ether, of light
and electrical vibrations, and of means
of harnessing these vibrations to prac-
tical uses, was not sufficiently advanced.
Vibrations in the ether have a range
which is comparable with the range of
pitch represented by a piano keyboard,
but having no fixed boundary at either
the bass or treble end.

“Human beings can pick up sounds
belonging to the centre portion of the
range of sounds, animals can respond
to sounds in the higher portion of the
scale, sounds completely inaudible to
the human ear. Finally a stage is
reached when neither humans nor
animals can hear the higher or finer
vibrations without a ‘medium,’ which
can receive them and transform or re-
duce them to a level at which the
human ear can comprehend.”

Dr. Young reached for his glass, as
our Hindu friend remarked:

“Very interesting. I had no idea you
had a leaning towards the psychic.”

The other two confessed that they
invariably found the subject fascinat-
ing, but they had never really given
psychic matter any serious considera-
tion, simply because they had so little
knowledge of it, and because they knew

of no one competent to advise. And if
the truth were told, perhaps their main
and real reason was that they had been
afraid of being laughed at.

THE OCCULT CLUB

That evening saw the birth of a new
society to which the founders — our
four bachelor clubmen — gave the name,
“The Society for the Investigation into
Matters pertaining to the Occult.” A
long and cumbersome name, but it was
agreed upon by all after the doctor had
given his view that a title, like a
diagnosis, should be self-explanatory,
though lengthy.

In due course arrangements were
made for a suitable place in which to
hold meetings and investigations. A
room was taken, on the doctor’s recom-
mendation, immediately above his con-
sulting-room in Harley Street. It was
a large airy room, where they were cer-
tain to be undisturbed by noise or by
any outside interference whatever. In
this room would be made investigations
of a critical scientific psychic nature in
the presence of tried and reputable
mediums who were world-famed for
'heir physical manifestations whilst
mder condition which eliminated the
slightest possibility of fraud or charla-
tanism.

Several weekly meetings had already
been held when the Secretary of this
new society, Dr. Young, was able to in-
form his confreres, with no little pride,
that he had obtained the services of a
medium, a Hungarian, Holtz by name,
who had been tested under every con-
ceivable condition, and whose manifes-
tations were of such a nature, and
carried with them such conviction, that
they could not be explained unless it
were admitted that he was assisted by
“supernatural” powers which were
manifested through him.

The appointed evening arrived. The
members, whose numbers had by now
increased to twelve, were all assembled,

THE PSYCHIC

many of them in eager anticipation of
the evening’s proceedings. When Holtz
arrived, he was introduced to the
members who found in him a shy,
sallow-looking individual, of un-
pleasing manner, but in whose eyes
burned some inward fire, the fire of the
leader, the prophet, the fanatic. But
yet he was shy, and unassuming.
Altogether a rather unusual type.

All doors and windows were locked,
bolted and then sealed, to prevent the
entrance or exit of any person, and to
prove that the whole proceedings were
above all suspicion. The lights were ex-
tinguished with the exception of one
bulb, which gave a red glow, just
sufficiently strong enough to enable all
to see.

The sitters then took their places,
sitting so as to form three parts of a
circle, the remaining portion of the
circle being occupied by the medium,
who lay on a mattress in front of a small
cabinet-like arrangement, which was
covered with black cloth. This arrange-
ment was agreed upon as simple, and
was critically examined by each member
after the medium’s legs and arms had
been tied and sealed.

Very soon the medium appeared to
lose normal consciousness, his eyes
closed, his body relaxed. Each man
there could hear his watch ticking in his
waistcoat-pocket, and could feel the
silence, breathe the silence, that had
fallen on the small assembly, which
gazed with rapt attention, and a keen
expectancy on the medium before
them.

Minutes passed, the medium quivered
slightly, his lips trembled perceptibly,
and simultaneously each heard the
sound as of a sudden rush of wind, and
felt the sensation as of a momentary
cold breeze emanating from the direc-
tion of the cabinet, and was conscious
of a prickling sensation in his scalp, as
though his hair was standing on end.
The lips of the medium moved more,
and simultaneously with the words
“Good evening, gentlemen,” came the

TYPEWRITER 71

gradual appearance of a wraith-like
figure from the neighbourhood of the
cabinet.

The sitters gazed with still more rapt
attention, their hands linked one with
the other for the joint purpose of con-
serving and maintaining the power
which emanated from each individually,
and which was drawn upon and em-
ployed by the psychic phenomena now
appearing in front of them, and at the
same time eliminating all possibility of
the perpetration of any fraud among
themselves.

Here was a group of men, enlightened
individuals, each in his own particular
sphere well above the average, now
critically examining the possibility of
proof of supernatural happenings, and
if such occurred, ready to search for
reasons and explanations which could
account for such phenomena and pre-
pared to use such information, if neces-
sary, for the benefit of humanity in
general.

They had agreed beforehand that
Dr. Young should take charge of pro-
ceedings, once the seance had com-
menced, for he had much experience in
these matters, and had explained on
previous occasions that fooling with a
medium in a trance, or an attempt to
interfere forcibly with an apparition,
might have extremely serious effects
upon, or even result in the permanent
injury or death of the medium.

THE APPARITION

As the assembly continued to stare,
the apparition slowly became clearer
and gradually began to take recognis-
able shape. More than one member felt
beads of sweat forming on his forehead
as the wraith became more and more
distinct and finally took the shape of an
extremely beautiful woman, who began
to speak to them in English, in a voice
obviously cultured and in striking con-
trast with that of the medium, who
spoke with a markedly foreign accent.

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

7 *

and had a none too fluent delivery.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I am pleased
to be able to meet so august an assembly
of enlightened minds and of such diverse
interest, enquiring into matters which
are really so simple of explanation, but
which, on account of the materialistic
outlook of modern civilisation, you find
so difficult. No doubt you wish me to
give you some proof of the continua-
tion of life after death, some practical
application of the laws governing
apports, materialisations, de-material-
isations, etc.

“Then be patient with me and con-
tinue to radiate the ectoplasm which
exudes from you all as individuals, and
concentrate sympathetically on your
medium.”

The doctor said, and it relieved many
of those present to hear his reassuring
voice, that he welcomed so charming an
intelligence and she had his solemn
avowal that the members would con-
tribute individually and collectively
their share towards the success of any
experiment which she might care to per-
form.

At this the apparition said:

“I am going to leave you with a sur-
prise, with puzzled minds, and a subject
for discussion when next you meet at
dinner at your club.”

It should be explained at this
juncture that all the members of the
society were also long-standing
members of the club, with the excep-
tion of the brilliant criminologist, Mr.
Douglas Sharp who, of recent months,
had become a fairly regular diner at the
club, and was fast becoming an
accepted member of this exceptional
and talented gathering.

“To continue,” said the apparition,
“you are seated on the first floor of a
house in Harley Street, immediately
above the rooms occupied by your
illustrious leader, Dr. Young. Below
you, is his office. On one of the desks
is a typewriter used by his lady typist
and secretary, Miss Frances Grant. As
an example of dematerialisation I will

produce that typewriter, without open-
ing window or door, and without break-
ing the seals which you have put on
them or on your medium.”

“Your continued concentration,
gentlemen, please,” begged Dr. Young,
who realised that in an experiment of
this nature, where an intelligence was
to leave the medium at such a distance,
greater maintained power and strength
would be required for the successful
performance of the experiment.

Again the atmosphere became tense
and as though electrified, again the
sitters felt that rush of cold air which
they had experienced when the wraith
had at first appeared before them, and
now she seemed to vanish into the wall
on the right of the sitters, to melt into
it, to be absorbed by it, as they watched.
In a very few seconds she re-appeared,
indistinctly at first and then more and
more distinctly, until they saw her as
she had previously appeared, now
placing a typewriter on a table near the
window, some six feet or more away
from the cabinet from which she had
originally appeared.

THE WRAITH EXPLAINS

She turned to the amazed sitters,
many of whom imagined that they must
have been hypnotised en masse.

“No, gentlemen,” she began, "you
have not been hypnotised. The explana-

THE PSYCHIC TYPEWRITER

tion is simple, and I must give it
quickly, my time is almost up, the power
is giving out and your medium has
suffered an extremely intense strain.

“When we pass from your earth to
the next sphere, we merely discard our
physical bodies. The spirit or astral
body continues its existence free from
its earthly limitations, untrammelled by
the flesh. Time and space, in your
earthly concepts, cease to exist. To
walls, doors, windows, to all earthly
matter, we are indifferent, and it was,
therefore, no difficult task for me to
pass from your presence into the room
below.

“My real task, which I could only
accomplish with your help, by using the
ectoplastic power which you are exud-
ing from your bodies together with that
from the medium, and by the assistance
of my unseen helpers who always
accompany me on these experiments,
was to de-materialise the typewriter.

“This was done, and I brought it
through the wall, into this room, and
placed it on this table, after it had been
scientifically materialised by my friend
here, an old and eminent scientist who
passed on some sixty years ago. My
friend here, Dr. Jacobsen, has con-
tinued his scientific researches in the
spirit world, and it is really he, who is
behind what may appear to you as a
very wonderful experiment.

“You, gentlemen, only saw the type-
writer after we had materialised it
again, and you now behold it clearly on
this table. To complete my experiment,
I will type you a message, which you
may like to keep as a record of this
experiment,”

The fair apparition did so, and turn-
ing to the sitters said:

“I must go now, and wish you on
behalf of my unseen helpers and my-
self every good wish for the success of
your psychic investigations. Perhaps,
Dr. Young will arrange for the type-
writer to be taken downstairs after you
have examined it and the message I have
typed on the paper.”

73

So saying, gradually she began to dis-
appear from view. The effect was a
gradual fading, the clear-cut features
and form grew fainter and fainter until
they finally had no existence. As we
still heard the words of her charming
farewell speech, words which seemed to
remain in our consciousness long after
they had been spoken, we began to
realise that the gripping tension of the
last forty minutes, had lessened, and
that our wonderful medium, who in the
spirit of the pioneer had allowed his
body to be used for our benefit, was
gradually gaining consciousness.

Dr. Young asked us to keep our
seats until the medium had completely
regained his normality.

“Ahl” he said, on recovering, “I
hope, gentlemen, your experiment was
a success.”

“Indeed it was,” said the doctor,
“come and examine this typewriter and
the message it contains.”

THE GHOSTLY TYPESCRIPT

Full lights were switched on again
and the experimenters, without excep-
tion, crowded round, and gazed with
astonishment at what the paper con-
tained.

“Missie Grant Sahiba — Salaam!
Khubadar! Khubadar! Khubadar!
Dactar Young Sahib Ki naukri Ko
mat

chor-la Khuda Ko su bandabust
bilkul saf hain, aur is wasti, isi
tarah, uske barl mehrbani say, Ap
kep as a-jatay hain.”

"Well, what do you make of that?”
asked the Rev. James Storm. “I can
make out your name, Young, and that
of your secretary Miss Grant, but the
rest of it conveys nothing to me. What
about you, Sir Sirgwishar, is it some
Indian tongue about which you can
enlighten us?”

Sir Sirgwishar smiled, shrugged his

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

74

shoulders, and turned to Douglas
Sharp:

“Looks more like a message in code
to me. Perhaps our friend from Scot-
land Yard will be able to translate it
for us.”

Douglas Sharp smiled in return and
said nothing. No one expected him to
reply to a question which everyone took
as being merely facetious.

However, as no one, that night, could
or would decipher the message, it was
decided to close the meeting and re-
lease the medium, who was profusely
thanked for his self-sacrifice, through
which such an interesting experiment
had been made possible. It was agreed
to leave the interpretation of the
message to some future occasion, and
each individual took a copy, hoping to
be able to decipher the message at his
leisure. The original was, of course,
preserved as a permanent record of the
society’s psychic researches.

A week passed, and by arrangement,
eleven of lie twelve members met one
evening at their club, where, round a
cosy fire, amid the clinking of glasses
and the odour of cigars, the discussion
commenced.

One by one they admitted their in-
ability to decipher the message, and two
members even went so far as to voice
the opinion that the message was a
mere jumble and had no meaning. At
last, Douglas Sharp, the criminologist
spoke :

“I think I can decipher the message,
although I must admit it has occasioned
me considerable serious thought and
concern as to where my official obliga-
tions to the service start and end.

“You will remember that each of us,
on joining this society, gave his un-
qualified assurance that should any in-
formation of a secret or confidential
nature come to light during our investi-
gations, whether it concerned a
member’s private life or his official
position, then that information should
be held secret and kept secret for all
time, unless the member concerned

released his confreres from their pledge.

“You will remember also, that while
you were all eagerly scrutinising the
message on the typewriter, I said very
little. I took a copy like the rest pf you,
but had deciphered the message
already. Why I did not disclose the
matter to you immediately, will be
evident when you have heard the whole
of my story.

“You know, of course, that I am
engaged in criminal investigation work,
after having served for some years in
a similar capacity out East, where the
rigours of the tropical climate forced
me to apply for a transfer to London.
Therefore, some of the details of my
investigations must remain secret.
However, I recognised the script on the
typewriter as none other than Urdu, the
universal language of India, and com-
monly known as Hindustani, but
written phonetically in English char-
acters.”

Young interrupted:

“What a pity Sir Sirgwishar is not
with us to-night. This would have
interested him. But — wouldn’t he be
able to read the message? I distinctly
remember his saying it conveyed
nothing to him. What do you make of
that, Sharp?”

“That occurred to me immediately I
read the message,” replied Sharp. “I
glanced towards Sir Sirgwishar, per-
ceived him change colour, and observed
the effort it caused him to produce his
usual gracious smile when someone
asked his opinion of the message. That
set me thinking, and I deemed it wise
to remain silent for a time.

“To-night, however, I can give you
the gist of the message, as no harm can
possibly come of the information being
made public.”

He passed across to his hearers a slip
of paper from his notebook, on which
was written the message copied from the
typewritten sheet on the night of the
seance. Underneath was a rough trans-
lation.

THE PSYCHIC

“Miss Grant. Greetings.

Beware! Beware! Beware!

Do not leave Dr. Young’s service
All things are clear to God, and
for

this reason in His great mercy, He
approaches
you in this way.”

Sharp continued:

“For several months now, good-
looking British girls have been accept-
ing secretarial posts abroad, and the
relatives of four of them have had no
word from them after the first month or
two. Scotland Yard, in conjunction
with the overseas police, have been
investigating the cause of their dis-
appearance, but were unable to make an
arrest, because they lacked the one link
in an otherwise continuous chain of in-
criminating evidence, a link made more
difficult to forge because of the wealth
of the individual suspected of being
behind the affair.”

TYPEWRITER 75

“And what has Miss Grant to do with
all this?” enquired the Rev. James
Storm.

“Just this. She was to have been the
next victim and had already thought of
leaving Dr. Young’s service. I inter-
viewed her, and under promise of strict
secrecy, was able to obtain valuable in-
formation, information sufficient for the
Yard to prepare a complete chain of
evidence, and at the same time was able
to warn Miss Grant of the dangerous
steps she had almost taken.

“I have since had another sitting with
a famous woman medium, who was able
to put me in touch with our fair visitor
of last week. She told me her name,
and that she was the sister of one of
the missing secretaries.

“And where does Sir Sirgwishar come
into this story?” asked Dr. Young.

"My men traced various clues, your
secretary was able to help, and, gentle-
men — Sir Sirgwishar shot himself this
morning!”

The Tower of the Forty
Companions

A Tale of Near Eastern Magic

by R. THURSTON HOPKINS

T HE ancient town of Jaffa, still
encircled by its ruined walls, is
built like an amphitheatre, on
the side of a hill which overlooks an
eternally lilac and luke-warm sea from
the height of a hundred and fifty feet.
The streets are tortuous, and entangled,
and the old houses are piled platform
fashion and in disorder on the side of
the hill.

As no gold is to be found in the soil,
and any landing is rather dangerous, as
the small harbour is obstructed by a
line of breakers, few Europeans find
their way there and the natives live a
life of undisturbed idleness.

Sometimes a misguided European will
come and try his hand at orange grow-
ing, only to find that the natives have
a certain magic in the way they culti-
vate this fruit, which baffles any
attempt at competition. Now and again
a traveller will stay a day or so there
on his way to Jerusalem. Sometimes an
expedition will poke about the ruined

mosques and churches for months at a
time.

All those who tarry a while at Jaffa
put up at the house of Sayyid Musjid,
who speaks good English, and is the
owner of a manufactory which turns
out cheap and showy Oriental goods
and sham curious for the bazaars of
Cairo and Alexandria. He lives in a
large and rambling house in a street
euphemistically called “The Way of
Pearls”; his windows are furnished
with real glass, and a gramophone, six
kitchen chairs and a large refectory
table (looted in the past from a con-
vent) adorn his best room.

The natives call him Pasha. He looks
upon himself as a European, has put all
the sinister manners and customs of the
Moslem behind him, and drinks whisky
or any of the native spirits, such as
araki or zebib, in long measure. He is
also one of the biggest rascals in the
town.

Once he had a daughter called Rahlo.

THE TOWER OF THE
Her mother was a Persian, and it was
Sayyid’s custom to think of Rahlo as
coming down through the centuries with
the blood of the Persian Magi. The
Persian girl’s voice is the softest,
sweetest voice in the world, and Rahlo ’s
voice was like that.

Her eyes were like the eyes of a
gazelle, and she wore her hair in two
splendid braids — fine and silken it was,
and blacker than the night of affliction.
Yes, Sayyid was very proud of Rahlo —
proud of her white skin and gentle
manners. His love for this lissom girl,
with her drowsy eyes, was the one
happy and bright page in his life.

Her mother died when Rahlo was
quite a small child, and later on she was
sent to school at Cairo. Cairo was the
London of Rahlo’s young imagination.
She had often and often looked at the
views of it on the picture-postcards
which mouldered in the window of the
cigarette-maker’s shop next door. She
had learned from the booab (door-
keeper) of the Djamia el Khadra
mosque of its gay life; of its dances,
theatres, and grand hotels.

It was all this liveliness — the variety
of nationalities, the living diorama
formed by the brilliant and ever-shift-
ing crowd where the East shakes hands
with the West that attracted her.
Dreams of European girl friends —
t>erhaps boy friends, too! — of moon-
light picnics to the Pyramids, of Paris
dresses, of still, drowsy evenings on
Nile pleasure-boats, floated through her
little head.

In the East girls arrive at maturity
with a suddenness which the Western
mind can hardly understand. Like the
great wine-coloured flowerswhich rioted
in the gardens of Jaffa, the girls budded,
were full blooms, and faded all too
swiftly. Their transition from child-
hood to womanhood was so rapid that
there was little chance of their minds
ever coming to any state of maturity
at all.

Rahlo was only sixteen, but she was
not a bit sorry to leave her father — she

FORTY COMPANIONS 77

was glad to leave behind the crumbling
house and the rose-coloured roofs of
Jaffa. When she was safe on board the
steamer for Alexandria she watched the
terraces of ancient houses and luxuriant
orange-groves fade away with a pas-
sionate joy and a wild beating of heart.
Sayyid Musjid and his curio manufac-
tory soon slipped from her mind too,
though the old fellow had shed real
tears for her from the harbour.

They were perhaps the only genuine
tears he had shed since his childhood —
it is true he often wept over his busi-
ness transactions, but such tears were
only spurious; they were pumped up to
soften the heart of the person he was
dealing with.

THE BRAIN SPECIALIST

About three
years after this
Rahlo returned
to her father’s
house, with her
education com-
pleted, but the
teachings of the
school at Cairo
had made few
inroads into the
labyrinthian
ways of her bar-
baric soul. She
now dressed her hair in the manner of
the Cairo dancing girls — cut short and
smoothed down, with heavy gold ear-
rings. She was wearing short silk
skirts, gossamer silk stockings and
coquettish little high-heeled shoes with
turquoise studded buckles, and she had
been to a dance at the Semiramis
hotel, had flirted with officers of the
Egyptian Army and bank clerks, and
had encountered all manner of
bohemian flotsam and jetsam.

Amongst the passengers on the boat
there was one individual who interested
her very much. He had come on board
at Alexandria. He was a man of about

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

thirty-five, tall, with broad shoulders,
rather pale, with clean-cut features and
rather full lips.

Rahlo had watched him on deck
and in saloon, and on inquiry had dis-
covered his name to be Hardacre. But,
Rahlo did not discover that this man
was the great Dr. Ralph Hardacre,
who, as everybody knows, was looked
upon at one time as the supreme
authority on the functions and dis-
orders of the brain. His vast fund of
special knowledge of the occult in rela-
tion to mental trouble had earned for
him a high place in the world of science
and a considerable fortune.

But when still quite a young man
he had given up seeing people in any
professional capacity, and had become
detached from the everyday world.
When he spoke to people it had seemed
that there was an actual contact. As
one of his old friends had said, he had
looked out on life through a window;
he conversed and listened and mixed
with other people, but he sat behind
that window like a sphinx.

Then he disappeared. Without warn-
ing and for no imaginable reason, in his
early manhood at the height of his
career he had left his house and
laboratory and disappeared. Perhaps,
in groping in that dim land of horror,
where madness, Satanism and demon-
iacal possession lurked, his own mind
had become unhinged. Who knows?
So much then of Hardacre’s past.

Hour after hour and all day long
Hardacre would sit in a deck-chair,
poring over some yellow and faded
parchments. If his head was not down
on the parchment, his eyes were fixed
on the horizon in a vacant, apathetic
stare. Rahlo had seen her father wear-
ing the same fixed look after he had
smoked too many hashish cigarettes.

The night after they had left Alex r
andria, Rahlo had gone up forward to
smoke a cigarette, for she was a true
Oriental in such habits. There she
found Hardacre sitting on a coil of
rope, his eyes fixed in a glassy stare,

his long thin hands clasped over his
knees, and an opium pipe by his side.

Rahlo stumbled over him in the
darkness, and murmured a hasty
apology. Hardacre had looked up at
her with his grave grey eyes, but said
nothing; then he had fallen forward in
a huddled attitude. She spoke to him
once or twice, and on receiving no
answer, caught his arm and shook him
violently.

She found that he was in a semi-
comatose condition, and without a
word she put her arm round him and
half-dragged him to his feet, and with
the help of a sailor who came up they
took him along the dark side of the
deck to his own cabin, where he was
placed on his bunk. The sailor had not
seen the opium pipe, for Rahlo had
hidden it before he came up, and at the
first opportunity had thrown it into he
sea.

Rahlo knew nothing of “Mrs.
Grundy,” the guardian angel of the
British matron, so after the sailor had
left the cabin she closed the door and
sat down with a cigarette between her
lips to watch her unconscious derelict
— for a derelict he was on the un-
charted seas of opium.

Once when she leaned over the side
of the bunk she kicked against some-
thing on the floor, and on picking it up
found it was a bundle of documents in
Arabic characters, which must have
fallen from the man’s pocket.

She turned over some of the faded
pages, and of a sudden her eyes rested
on her father’s name written in some
marginal notes. The texts of the docu-
ment was written in ornate Arabic char-
acters of a time long gone by, and she
was unable to decipher it, but the notes
were in modern Arabic, giving positions
and particulars of chapels and ruins of
the Crusaders up and down Palestine
and Syria, also the names of various
hotels in the towns. It was in the last
list that her father’s name was men-
tioned.

Some of the notes referred to a “tall

THE TOWER OF THE FORTY COMPANIONS

tower” and buried treasure — the
treasure of Ram-allah. No doubt the
man was an archaeologist hunting for
some legendary treasure buried by the
Crusaders. Year after year such men
came to Jaffa, making it their head-
quarters for expeditions to the buried
cities in the desert regions.

An hour later the man turned over
uneasily and opened his eyes, he
stretched out both hands before him,
carefully at first, as though he was
groping in the dark for some object.
Rahlo placed the parchments on a
side table, and went and stood beside
him.

Hardacre stared at her in a dazed
way for some moments, and then he
sat up. With a certain unaffected
courtesy of gesture he waved Rahlo to
be seated. There was a quiet smile on
his lips, which were inclined to a
generous Greek fullness.

“I’m awfully sorry this has hap-
pened,” he said, speaking in a low
weary voice. “Why did you trouble
about me?”

Rahlo was rather agreeably surprised
when he repeated the last question in
good Arabic.

“Why did I bring you here?” she
said. “In the first place because it is
a foolishness for a man exhausted by
the use of drugs to sleep on deck all
night. In the second place you would
have been robbed by the natives. Now
just attend, lie down again, and I will
go and get you some coffee.”

Hardacre slid back on his pillow with
a deep sigh, watching Rahlo with the
leaden eyes of a tired child.

Rahlo soon returned with the coffee,
and when he had finished the black, hot
mixture, with much spluttering, she
pulled him on his feet, and opening the
door made him walk with her on to the
deck.

“Take my arm, and walk some sense
into that twilight brain of yours,” she
said; and so for an hour this strangely
met couple tramped up and down in the
bright Syrian starlight, Rahlo’s tongue

79

lashing him with bitter words for bi?
weakness in smoking opium, Hardacre,
stepping like a sleep-walker, whimper-
ing like a child, and saying opium was
the “divine spark,” and that “he could
not face things without it.”

crusader’s treasure

That was
some weeks
ago, and since
then Hardacre
and the girl had
been friendly.
Rahlo had
taken the opium
from him, and
now he was
staying at her father’s house. But he
puzzled them very much.

He had the wildest and most ex-
travagant ideas about a treasure hidden
by the Western Crusaders, and had
been wandering about the country for
some years with his bundle of parch-
ments, some of which dealt with the
Templars and Latin Churches in
Palestine. It was a mixed bundle of
documents, and the languages over
which he spent so many hours, varied
from the Arabic dialect of Aramanean
character, and Syriac, to the ancient
Norman French of the Knights.

Hardacre had some curious ideas
that he could divine the treasure by
some psychic power he possessed.

“You see,” he explained to Rahlo.
“I have always been psychic since
childhood. I’ve always known things
about people without being told, and
found lost things intuitively. Some
people solve a problem by the process
of reasoning, but I arrive at the solution
by psychic perception.”

“Certainly this man is mad,” said
Sayyid to himself. However, he was a
blessing and a godsend to the old
merchant, for he paid him well for his
food and quarters, and gave him many
good suggestions for the manufacture

8o

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

of marketable antiques. Besides, Hard-
acre would squat with him on the
Turkey rugs and drink all manner of
Oriental drinks, and sometimes when
Rahlo was out they would smoke
hashish.

Sayyid would relate stories which
rolled in crescendos of wickedness.
When he told them the blue smoke
from their cigarettes seemed to drift up
in evil shapes, and the air seemed full
of evil spirits. The devil had been a
sulky shadowy fellow to Hardacre in
days past; but in the front room at
Sayyid’s he paraded before him in a tar-
brush and tortoiseshell-rimmed spec-
stacles instead of the usual horns and
hoofs. A lively, truculent fellow was
the devil, indeed I

In the evenings the great German
oil-lamps were lit in the front room, and
Rahlo reigned there supreme. In her
flimsy blouse she looked as cool and
fresh as the great white flowers of the
creeper which nodded in at the open
windows.

Hardacre would sit staring at her.
He thought he had never seen anything
so barbarically beautiful as this child of
the East. But she did not seem to
notice him at all — only in a motherly
way. He was certain that he found no
favour in Rahlo’s eyes.

But there he was wrong. Although
Rahlo looked at him with no sign of
interest in her expression and often
seemed as if she had forgotten his
presence, her thoughts were full of him.
She admired his broad shoulders, his
grave grey eyes, his clean-cut features.

She pictured herself going back to
England with him. She determined to
ask the chemist to make her a love-
philtre to put in his food. From time
to time she looked up shyly from under
her long black lashes, and Hardacre
could not understand what was running
in her mind.

But one evening he was passing
under her bedroom window when some-
thing struck him softly on the cheek

and stooping, he picked up a small
square of silk on which Arabic words
had been worked in coloured beads. It
gave out a faint odour of oil of jasmine.
Then came a low, amorous ripple of
laughter, and the window was softly
closed again.

As soon as Hardacre looked at the
token he realised that it was a love
message from Rahlo, delivered in the
native fashion. He was not prepared
for this kind of thing. He had no in-
tention of beginning a love affair with
a native girl, which could only end
disastrously.

That night Hardacre could not sleep
much. He lay awake, thinking of
Rahlo, with her rounded cheek, her in-
viting eyes, and her hair, which glinted
like the blue steel of a gun-barrel.
When he did sleep, he had dreams in
which she held the high place.

He rose early and wondered as he
bathed and shaved, what the day would
bring forth. Catching sight of his own
reflection in the looking-glass, he could
not help but notice the look of healthi-
ness which had returned to his cheeks
during the last few weeks of calm peace
with Sayyid and Rahlo. His enforced
lapse from the opium habit had worked
wonders on him, and some of his old
vigour and interest in mundane things
of life had returned.

“By the way, Sayyid,” said Hard-
acre that morning, “I don’t think
Rahlo has enough change for a girl of
her age and vivaciousness. Perhaps
she would like to come and dine with
me at the Hotel d’Orient to-night”
“Splendid 1” cried Rahlo.

“Her wish is sufficient for my agree-
ment in the matter,” said Sayyid.

“The Hotel d’Orient,” the girl
echoed. “Isn’t that the new hotel
which the big French firm built when
I was away at Cairo — the place with
the delightful cafe built out into the
harbour, lit up with thousands of little
fairy lamps at night?”

“It’s on the old harbour,” he replied,

THE TOWER OF THE

“but I don’t know how long it has been
built. The question is, would you like
to come?”

Rahlo nodded and squeezed his arm.

AT THE HOTEL D'ORIENT

At length, when the hour of seven
arrived — the hour fixed for the appoint-
ment with Rahlo drew near — Hardacre
came into the main living-room re-
splendent in a new suit of white ducks,
a good-looking well-set up man. His
heart thumped as he heard Rahlo
coming down the wide stairs which led
directly into the room. She appeared
with her hat off, and her dark hair done
in a new and wonderful way that made
her look like some mysterious Egyptian
princess, and a girl at the same time.

Hardacre led Rahlo into the “Way
of Pearls,” where they obtained the hire
of a swift carriage with two ponies to
drive them to the Hotel d’Orient.

“How nice of you to bring me,” said
Rahlo softly, as he led her into the
small but picturesque hotel on the har-
bour. A polite waiter came forward,
bowing the bow only accorded to the
man who exhales a strong aura of
prosperity and profusion of tips.

“This way. sir,” he said, “the first
floor if you wish to dine in the open-air
restaurant over the harbour.”

Hardacre nodded.

“Come along, child,” he said, “I’m
frightfully hungry.”

“Are you? I’m not.”

He was rather pleased with Rahlo for
saying this. He thought that things

FORTY COMPANIONS 81

would lose much charm if the girl had
been foolishly hungry — too intent upon
the excellence of the foodstuffs to
realise that a dinner in a restaurant
over a dreamy coloured, luke-warm sea
was not so much a meal as a romance.

But in spite of that, Hardacre told
himself that he must not allow the
friendship to develop into anything
more intimate, indeed, his purpose in
taking Rahlo out to dinner was to show
an adamant front to her allurements.

“Perhaps,” said Hardacre, as they
sat down on the divan whilst the waiter
put the finishing touches to the table.
“Perhaps you would like an absinthe
before dinner.”

Rahlo hesitated, but eventually
thought she would try it.

When the drinks were served, she
swallowed the absinthe with a little
crinkling of her white forehead.

The surrounding hush seemed to
have cast a spell over all. When the
dusk falls over the Mediterranean the
whole world seems to fall into silence —
a silence so subtle, so gleaming, so
alluring — so wonderful with its pure
blending of shadows and colour — that
it soothes the brain with almost the
same effect as the power of some
insidious drug.

The dinner was rather a silent affair.
Rahlo’s love token — the native avowal
of attachment — had invested the night
with unforeseen possibilities, nay prob-
abilities. Hardacre had said that he
was hungry, but his heart was beat-
ing like a steam-hammer, and such
energy is fatal to appetite. He ate
mechanically, his eyes rarely leaving the
shadowy blue-black hair, and faun-like
eyes that smiled at him across the table.

Rahlo had determined to win the
Englishman by hook or by crook, and
with him sitting there so close to her,
she wished desperately as she had often
wished before, that either Hardacre
hadn’t seemed quite so desirable in her
eyes, or else that she herself hadn’t been
separated from him by the racial line.

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

which irrevocably divides the East and
West.

She had lied with the perfect spon-
taneity of the East when she had told
him that this was her first tete-d-tete
dinner with a man. She had taken
many such dinners at Cairo — at the
Italian Club, on the terraces of Kasr-
El-Nil Skating Rink, or the Cafe
Reiche, looking upon them as a mere
commonplace of the irresponsible
Cairo life, where the tyranny and
cruelty of the East for ever drones out
its undertones and men take their
opportunities with happy-go-lucky
gusto.

But of such men as Hardacre she
knew little. Experience only touched
the various groupings of Egyptian
society, which did not include the
English population. She had moved
much among the Italian-French-
Arabic-Greek inhabitants, where
society is collectively merged under
the one heading of “Cairenes.”

But here, to-night, things seemed
different. The men she had met in
Cairo were lower voiced, softer-footed
and keener eyed, all of which betokens
the amber-coloured complexion and
Oriental blood, and their womenfolk
were of the type one sees at the pigeon-
shoot on Sunday afternoons — gambling
on the wholesale slaughter of the birds,
with hard, bold eyes.

“How nice it is of you to bring me
here,” said Rahlo in a languid, luscious
voice, which is one of the triumphs of
the merging of East and West. “Why
are you doing all this for me?”

Hardacre looked into the dark tran-
quillity of her eyes and became con-
fused.

“Because — because I like you,” he
stammered. “You see I feel that I owe
you a great deal for the way you looked
after me on the steamer. It was good
of you to put yourself out for a poor
derelict like me.”

Rahlo shrugged her shoulders and
took his answer without an outward

tremor, and her eyes were still calm
and undisturbed — but within she had
lost herself in a whirl of strange,
throbbing emotions.

BLACK BUTTERFLY AND MAUVE

The waiter
brought coffee,
tall, fluted
glasses of iced-
water and
Grand Mar-
nier, and left
them with a
studied gesture, which seemed to imply
that he would not return until he was
called.

Rahlo drank the iced-water grate-
fully, and pushed back the coffee and
liqueur.

“What other reason could there be,
child?”

Rahlo hesitated.

“I have heard girls in Cairo, in
Alexandria, talk a lot,” she replied. “I
dare say a good deal of it is nonsense.
But — but they always say that no
Englishman ever shows ordinary
friendship to a girl of the East. . .
“Well?”

Rahlo dropped her eyes.

“Well, you know. . . . Does the
black butterfly mate with the mauve?”

“Look here,” said Hardacre. “You
don’t understand these things, Rahlo.
We are just friends and we must keep
so. If I made love to you I should be
simply deceiving you, for I shall re-
turn to my own people in the end. It
would not be right to love and leave
you. Life is a thing that hurts enough
in the ordinary way, my dear! It hurts
without logic or reason. Anyhow —
there is no need to go hurting you, is
there?”

Rahlo looked up without a word,
with her face flushed and rebellion in
her fine eyes, and Hardacre bent down
and kissed her cheek. She leant back
to put her arm about him, drew his

THE TOWER OF THE

face down and burst into a storm of
tears.

Hardacre lifted her and held her in
his arms and kissed her again — incred-
ibly — without a spark of emotion. They
were not lovers, but two human souls
fighting their way out of a spasm of
pain. At last Hardacre tore himself
away from Rahlo.

“If you leave me I shall die,” she
cried. “Darling, don’t leave me. Let
us go on just being friends; but don’t
leave me. . . .

During the next few weeks Hardacre
struggled with all kinds of obstinate
interrogations. He wondered if all the
world was even as he, urged to this by
one motive and to that by another,
creatures of chance and impulse,
swayed by a kiss or a pipe of opium or
a mosquito bite. Had he indeed to
abide by what he had said and done
and chosen?

After all, why shouldn’t he reject the
conventions of the West and marry
Rahlo? She was loyal and generous,
and would make a good wife. Why not
marry her and settle down in Jaffa, and
there work out the residue of his days?

Day after day he contemplated life
and Rahlo and his future. It was a
crowded and muddled contemplation.
It invaded his dreams and even made
him forget opium for a while. But the
drug habit was too strong in him to
remain dormant for long.

One evening, just as Rahlo was
thinking of going up to her bed,
Rosetta, the maid, came to her with a
scared face.

“The old chemist spoke truly to me
this morn when he said the English
effendi was an evil man and a wizard,”
she whined. “Come quickly! He is
making magic in the garden ... he
will put us all under an evil spell.”

Rahlo came upon Hardacre in the
garden, and she had an idea that
another figure glided into the shadows
just as she arrived. Hardacre lay flat

FORTY COMPANIONS 83

on his face, his hands clasped and his
chin resting on them. Before him was
a small Egyptian chafing-dish, and
something was burning on a little pile
of red-hot charcoal with a vicious
green flame, and on this Hardacre’s
eyes were fixed; a new opium pipe
was clenched in his hands.

He made no sign that he saw or
heard. He raised Ms head sharply and
frowned, taking from Ms pocket a
glass plate, which he held above the
flame for a moment. Then he turned it
over and inspected it. Dark char-
acters — they looked like Persian char-
acters — had appeared on the plate. He
grunted and muttered:

“Forty guardians and a tall, tall
tower . .

Rosette gazed at him aghast.

“He is making charms against us,
mistress. What a horrid sight!”

“H’sh!” said Rahlo guardedly from
her side, as though in the presence of
spirits. “He is receiving a message
from somewhere; the words are not
from Mm.”

THE TREASURE OF RAM-ALLAH

Something
seemed to crack
in Rahlo’s
brain; or it
might have
been the hair on
her head. She
w a t c hed and
waited. From
his blue lips —
the lips of a man in a hypnotic trance
— came clear, without a tremor:

“The forty companions and a tall,
tall tower.”

“The tall, tall tower,” he muttered,
under wrinkled brows. “That’s what I
wanted. Good! Now for it! Now
then! Good! Oh, by Allah, that’s
good!” He grunted again and bit his

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

under-lip. “Now for the second line —
the key line,” he said softly. “I cannot
get it yet. It is all in the twilight.”

Rahlo noticed how his face grew
agitated and anxious, for fear the power
to find the next line should be snatched
from him. The anguish of mind was
now tenfold sharper.

“Not quite yet — not quite,” he whis-
pered. “Give me time. Do wait a
moment. I shall get that line:

“ ‘The forty companions and a tall,
tall tower

Guard the treasure at Ram-
allah.’

“Ouh, soul of a dog I"

Hardacre raised himself on his
elbows, shivered from head to heel, then
rolled over on his back.

Together they carried him back to
the house, and Rahlo, as before,
watched over him. As she sat there,
the lines he had muttered kept re-
curring in her mind, and suddenly she
realised that they referred to the
Mosque Djamia el Abiad, with its tower
of die Forty Companions of the
Prophet, which was only a few miles
outside the town of Yafo. So that might
be the hiding-place of the treasures of
the Western Crusaders !

A sudden fear that Hardacre had at
last hit upon the treasure rushed upon
her. In that case his journey was at an
end, and he would return to his own
country. That is, if he remembered
anything about it when he recovered.
. . . She could not bear to think of him
going out of her life. . . .

Hardacre awoke two hours later to
find Rahlo standing at the door watch-
ing him. He sat up.

“Well,” said Rahlo, “you’ve been at
the opium again 1 You won’t take long to
drive yourself mad the way you’re
going on, if that’s your wish. I sup-
pose that man I saw lurking at the back
of the banana-tree gave you the stuff?”

“Which man?” askdd Hardacre with
a bewildered look. “Oh, yes — yes, a
native fellow, of course. He gave me
the opium. I told you it was the vital
spark of life to me. I couldn’t do with-
out it. Have I been talking? I’ve had
a bit of a doze. Did I talk a lot of
nonsense? You look rather ’’

“You startled me,” she answered.
“You looked so — so horrible. Were you
dreaming?”

“I do not remember anything. It is
all a blank — everything spins before
me in a rainbow-tinted whirl at such
times.”

Rahlo took a damascene-workbox
filled with opium away from him, and
he whined like a child. She then turned
away, thinking it best to say nothing
about the “Forty Companions," to him,
so she merely remarked:

“You’d better have a cold bath. I’ll
tell Rosetta to bring you the towels.”

Early next morning Rahlo, looking
down from her window, saw Hardacre
pacing up and down the garden. She
dressed and went down to him.

“Do you feel better?” she asked him
in a soft voice. “Oh, why do you
smoke that terrible drug? I thought
you were going to give it up.”

While she was speaking she was
taking notes of Hardacre’s state of
mind and body. He stopped.

“You have not told me anything
about your hunt for the hidden
treasure lately. Have you given it up?”
she asked, looking into his eyes.

Hardacre’s eyes wandered restlessly
over the rounded span of shimmering
ocean before them, and he answered in
a stupid, far-away voice:

“Oh, I don’t worry — or care much
about that — not now.”

Rahlo now felt convinced that Hard-
acre knew nothing about the two lines
concerning the “Forty Companions”
and the treasure. She looked upon the
delivery of the secret to her alone as
pure magic.

THE TOWER OF THE

CABLE FROM ENGLAND

Rahlo was
sniffing a spray
of orange-
blossom and
looking up at
the moon; and
Hardacre was
sitting on a
fount a i n on
the Yafo road.
All was very
still — that
passion-
ate, tropical stillness with a pulse in it.
Somewhere, dose at hand, a native was
playing a twittering tune on a reed-
flute, and a girl’s voice singing a plain-
tive chant joined with it.

The conscience of Hardacre all the
day had played hot and cold with his
nerves, for that morning he had re-
ceived a cable from his brother in Eng-
land that had somewhat flabbergasted
him:

RETURN TO ENGLAND. FATHER
DANGEROUSLY ILL. GREATLY DESIRES
TO SEE YOU AGAIN. YOUR PRESENCE
MAY SAVE HIS LIFE.

He felt that this summons was one
that must be obeyed. Yes, he felt that
he must pull himself together and go,
even if he had to return again to his
hiding-place in the East. But he had to
break the news to Rahlo, and he did not
care for this task. He felt very sorry
for the girl too.

But even when he thought how
beautiful she looked in the silvered
moonlight he could not bring himself
to ever think of marrying her. He had
seen her strike a Mulatto slave-girl
across the face with a hide-whip, and
torture a scorpion with a red-hot
skewer. He had been shocked by her
calculating cruelty; and at times the
shadow of deep passion in her eyes had
frightened him. So, haltingly, he told
her the truth — told her that he was
leaving her.

FORTY COMPANIONS 85

Hardacre did not like to think of that
scene for many weeks afterwards.

He saw her bosom rising and falling
beneath her silk blouse as she struggled
to hold herself from a burst of passion.
She clutched at her neck; and as his
voice failed him he heard the hiss of her
breathing in the moments of silence that
followed.

“I did not think I mattered at all to
you, Rahlo,” he said.

The girl made no answer; then she
laughed. It was a reckless kind of
laugh, and many men would have
looked out for the trouble that was
ahead. But Hardacre was thinking of
other things, and he did not see the fury
in those dark eyes.

No one will ever know what trouble
of heart Rahlo must have undergone
after Hardacre returned to England.
A few weeks later she died. The
doctor said it was pneumonia, but all
the village knew that there was a crack
in her heart and evil spirits entered and
pressed her to death.

Her soul came back a little and her
lips moved before she died. Sayyid
Musjid bent down to listen.

“Bury with my body the silver cigar-
ette-case which the English effendi gave
me. Burn all other things belonging to
me.”

Hardacre did not reach England in
time to see his father alive, and after a
few days in London he yearned for the
sea-coast, with its glowing light and
clean air. One evening, while walking
on Brighton’s long glittering parade —
while all Brighton, that is to say as
much of it as could crowd on the sea-
front was out taking the air — Hard-
acre was aware that some woman,
apparently at a vast distance, was call-
ing him by his Christian name.

It struck him that he had heard the
voice before, but when and where he
could not at once remember. In the
short space it took to cross the road to
the Grand Hotel he had thought over
a do_en women who might have played

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

a trick on him, and had eventually
decided that it must have been a passer-
by speaking to some other Ralph.

i ARAB'S PONY

In the drive of
jp* |>thh. the Grand Hotel

his eye was
arrested by the
sight of a black
Arab pony, with
native saddle,
decorated with
beads and shells. It looked very much
out of place, standing beside several
luxurious motor-cars.

In a moment his mind flew back to
Jaffa and Rahlo’s Arab pony with a
sense of irritation and dread. Poor
Rahlo was dead and buried . . . and yet
. . . and yet he could swear that the
pony was the one which he had often
seen her riding in Jaffa. It is impos-
sible to say what a strange sense of
apprehension the sight of that harmless
pony evoked in him.

Hardacre went up to the hall-porter
and said:

“That Arab pony will get hurt by one
of the cars soon. I wonder who was
careless enough to leave it unattended
like that?”

“What? Where?” the hall-porter
asked. “I can’t see any Arab pony,

Hardacre looked round again. The
pony was no longer there. How long
he stood motionless he did not know.
Everything around him seemed to
gyrate in glittering circles. Finally, he
was aroused by the porter picking up
the walking-stick which he had
dropped, and asking whether he was
feeling faint.

From the fantastic to the familiar is
but a step. He took the stick with a
ipumbled thanks and dashed half-
fainting into the bar for a large brandy
and soda.

Lord Combermere, the aeronaut who

had just returned from rising higher in
the Stratosphere than any other man had
done, was sitting with a friend at one of
the coffee-tables. Hardacre had been at
school with Combermere, and the sight
of the famous aeronaut was somehow
very comforting.

He plunged into the midst of a con-
versation at once, and the fact that he
was seeing and talking to people who
would not vanish in smoke was more
comforting to him at that moment than
the consolations of religion. Hardacre
wanted lights and company — just as ft
child who has had some dreadful dream
leaps out of bed and rushes downstairs
to find light and companionship.

Only when the last guest had de-
parted from the bar did Hardacre go up
to his bedroom. A few minutes after he
had tumbled into bed the voice called
a second time:

“Ralph I Ralph, darlingl”

There was no mistake about the
words or the voice this time. It was
Rahlo calling, and her voice rang
through his brain.

“Oh, do forgive me. I should have
told you that I knew the secret of the
treasure of Ram-allah. But you ran
away from me — oh, cruel, cruel man.
But I loved you — always shall love
you. Listen ... It becomes difficult
to make my voice reach you. You will
find the treasure somewhere in the
Tower of the Forty Companions at
Karamouk. One mile north of the
Well of Rishtan.”

The voice dwindled until there was
only a singing sound in his ears. Be-
fore he dropped off to sleep, Hardacre’s
brain went round and round the trend
of thought; and again and again he
gave up, baffled and in despair.

The location of the treasure of Ram-
allah seemed likely to be correct. The
voice was as inexplicable as the source
of information regarding the treasure.
And yet the whole thing was so absurd.

Next morning Hardacre explained to
himself, with optimism which morning
sunlight brings to night-long wrestling

THE TOWER OF THE FORTY COMPANIONS

with a problem, that his brain, digestion
and eyesight had all three started to jib
at the same moment.

“After all,” he argued, “the presence
of Rahlo’s Arab pony was in itself
enough to prove the existence of a
spectral illusion. One may hear phan-
tom voices and see the ghost of a dead
woman, but surely never the ghost of a
pony. The whole thing seems too
absurd to be considered seriously.”

On the following morning Hardacre
decided to put a hundred miles between
himself and the pursuing voice. He
caught a coach which landed him at an
inn in a remote village in Cornwall.

For bleak, unadulterated dolefulness
that inn was the worst of many that he
had passed a night in. The coffee-
room, a grizzly museum of stuffed
birds, foxes, dogs and fish, whispered
of stale beer, tobacco and the dust of
all the centuries. His bedroom windows
would not open, and the bed exhaled a
faint aroma of mildew and rats.

Then came supper with pickled
onions, ancient cold mutton, and an
apple-pie with leathery crust. It was
just the sort of meal and evening to
make a man remember his past sins,
and think about any others he intended
to commit if he ever survived the damp
bed which awaited him.

Hardacre took a stiff peg of brandy
to dilute his misery, and just as his
mind was growing drowsy he heard the
clop-clop-clop of a horse in the court-
yard below him and the sound of some-
one dismounting on the cobbles. Then
he heard the rider rapping on the door
with the handle of her whip. Of course,
it was a “her” — he was certain of that.

By this time Hardacre was beginning
to realise that he was bound to the side
of Rahlo’s ghost till the end of Time.
Very much against his will he jumped
out of bed and peered through the win-
dow — which had been sealed in its
frame by countless coats of paint. He
picked up a small poker, and after a
struggle, forced the window open a
little way.

s?

Peering down into the court-yard he
could just discern the shadowy face of
his dead and buried friend Rahlo. The
face was white and cold and there was
a horrid sort of soullessness about her
eyes. She didn’t look dead, and she
didn’t look quite alive. She spoke to
Hardacre then — or did she send a
message to his brain? Anyway, her lips
did not move, but he heard her just as
clearly as if she had spoken the words.

“Ralph, you must help me to come
back to you. I am very weak at pre-
sent, but every day I shall get stronger.
Soon we will return to Jaffa and hunt
for the treasure of Ram-allah. You will
help me, Ralph, won’t you?”

Hardacre watched her in horrid per-
plexity. Somehow, the idea of this dead
thing getting stronger and stronger
filled him with bewilderment and terror.
Then the dead girl began to move, and
all at once he realised, with horror, that
she was so weak that she staggered
about in a groping and random fashion.
With a cry of disgust Hardacre
slammed the window down, and going
over to the bed he sank down in a
parozysm of terror.

Hardacre no longer wished to seek
the treasure of Ram-allah, but he de-
sired peace and repose more than any-
thing else in the world. The presence
of Rahlo filled him by turns with
horror, blind fear, a dim sort of re-
morse and utter despair. He felt that
her shadow would not rest until he had
returned to Jaffa and found the
treasure. His own anxiety was to
satisfy Rahlo’s demands as quickly as
possible, and so rid himself of her
ghostly company.

BACK IN JAFFA

Of course, Rahlo was waiting for
Hardacre when he landed at Jaffa a few
weeks later, and she seemed to gain
strength, just as surely as Hardacre’s
vital force was ebbing away from him.
Once she clutched his wrist and her

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

nails seemed to bite into his flesh and
he felt his strength flowing from his
body into hers. Then he suddenly knew
with an awful certainty that if he did
not soon free himself from her he would
be dead within a few weeks.

Hardacre had been welcomed at the
Trianon Hotel and safely installed in a
large room looking towards the orange-
groves of Sarona. A few days later he
went down with a slight attack of fever.
He dosed himself with gin, Worcester
sauce and cayenne — rather an empiric
treatment, and it cannot be claimed
that it had any tranquillising effect on
him.

In the end he phoned for a doctor,
and a young Syrian physician came to
see him. He soon diagnosed the case
of Ralph Hardacre. A man who through
secret troubles had taken drugs until
eyes, brain and stomach had all become
thoroughly unhealthy.

“First of all,” he said in a coaxing

tone, “I’ll give you some stuff which
will make you jolly well sleep like a
log. No bad dreams; nothing but — how
do you say it? — just forgetting.”

The young doctor soothed the
haggard man on the bed.

“To-morrow I’ll be round to take you
in hand seriously. I’ll have you well in
a few days. You’ve nothing to worry
about at all. Hold out your arm. That’s
right— now . . ”

The doctor bent over the expectant
Hardacre with a dainty hypodermic
syringe and pumped enough morphia
into him to rest him for she hours.

A smile of relief and repose began to
creep over Hardacre’s face.

“I hope Rahlo won’t get past this,”
he whispered. “God! All my . . .
troubles vanishing in mist . . . this is
supreme happiness! Doctor . . . you
must lend me that sy.rnge. I lost mine
in Cairo . . . lost . . . lost . . .”

The voice ceased and Hardacre
slipped back on the pillow.

The light-headedness which accom-
panies fever acts differently on different
men. Hardacre’s delirium gave way to
a fierce determination to wipe out
Rahlo’s ghost once and for all. It
struck him that his best plan would
be to have a saddled horse ready and
then when Rahlo rode up on her pony
he would mount and ride her down —
and if necessary flay girl and horse with
a riding-whip.

This, of course, was merely the semi-
delirious notions of a man devil ridden
by fever and nerves; but it struck
Hardacre as being eminently practical.
It must be remembered that the Un-
seen had now become more dominant
in Hardacre’s life than the Seen. If
ever a man was being hounded to his
death by the Powers of Darkness, he
was that man. He therefore ordered a
native boy to saddle a horse and await
with it at the rear of the house.

That evening as Hardacre was walk-
ing in the orange-grove which adjoined
the garden of the hotel, he saw Rahlo
mounted on her pony blocking his path

THE TOWER OF THE

in the twilight. He doubled back,
mounted his horse, giving it a vicious
cut with the whip. The horse had not
been out of the stable for a couple of
days, and he was off like a flash of a
pistol. The brute bolted straight up the
Jaffa road, leaving the town far behind
and flying over the open desert at
racing speed.

As he sped along the phantom of
Rahlo dissolved into swimmy specks
within his eyes, and in a few moments
he had almost forgotten why it was that
he was astride a horse and why he
carried a clumsy hide whip. But he
was not a bit surprised to find that his
feet were bare and that he was wearing
only a suit of silk pyjamas.

Hardacre must have lost conscious-
ness, for when he recovered he was
kneeling on the soft white sand, and
looking up at a tall square tower which
gleamed whitely in the moonlight. It
seemed someone wanted to speak to
him badly ; trying to call him by name,
but the voice was no more than a husky
whisper. . . .

CURSES

Suddenly
there was a
sound behind
him of a horse
at the gallop.
His head flew
round in the
ready appre-
hension of his pursuer. The hoofs drew
nearer in the twilight, for the unknown
rode with reckless haste. A second
more and Rahlo reigned up her pony
beside him, hair flying, half clothed.
Hardacre met her eyes with a look of
such hate and disgust that she cowered
before it.

“Rahlo,” said Hardacre, speaking
slowly, as if weighing every word he
uttered. “As a friend whom you have
haunted day after day and month after
month, I curse youl As a man who

FORTY COMPANIONS 89

hates the sight of you, I curse youl As
a man who is about to die, I curse youl
And as one who, in this awful moment,
calls Heaven to aid him, I curse youl”

“What! You curse me?” Hardacre
felt her screaming from between her
white, clenched teeth. “You would try
to drive me away? No, no, Ralph. Our
souls are united. You can never run
away from me again.” She clung to him
as if her slender arms were made of
steel. “I am stronger than you are now,
Ralph. You must come with me.”

Hardacre cursed and raised his whip
to cut down the phantom, but checked
himself suddenly, for he was afraid he
was going mad. He must not let him-
self go. Was it pure hallucination? He
felt that all the world round him was
unreal and fantastic. He felt he was
slipping, and stood for a moment
battling for his sanity.

He looked down at his bare feet. . . .
It was strange that he should be stand-
ing on the open desert dressed in
pyjamas. He reasoned with himself.
Was this all some ghastly dream? Per-
haps he would wake up soon and find
himself in bed at the Trianon Hotel.

“Remember how you chased up and
down Syria and Palestine searching for
the treasure of Ram-allah?” asked
Rahlo. “Well, it was only a few miles
from Jaffa all the time. This is the
Tower of the Forty Companions, and
the treasure must be hidden somewhere
in its stone-work. But I suppose you
are no longer interested in such things.
You’re such a changeable man, Ralph
— and, I fear, rather ungrateful. In-
stead of thanking me for guiding you to
the treasure tower you curse me.”

Rahlo laughed, and Hardacre
thought that he had never heard any-
thing so horrible in his life. Then she
gripped his arm and her face came
within an inch of his. It was human
and yet somehow not human, and he
noticed that the flesh had now grown
firmer and warmer looking.

It became evident to Hardacre that
the dead Rahlo was now filled with a

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

90

malign energy; her face was set with a
positively devilish determination. She
turned and urged Hardacre towards the
door in the base of the tower. Fight-
ing like mad all the time to get away
from her he stumbled along until they
reached the door.

“Up the steps — up the steps,” she
was panting, and her dark eyes were
set like flaming things on the dark
spiral stairway which led up the well-
dark interior of the tower.

Up and up the steps they stumbled.
Hardacre no longer had the will of
strength to oppose Rahlo’s wishes. He
moved upward, urged forward by a
monstrous compulsion.

Round and round, and up and up
that horrible winding stairway he went
with Rahlo following him. Her grip in
him was so strong that her nails seemed
to burn into his flesh. At last they
reached the top and came out on a flat
stone roof.

Three hundred feet below them the
country was a neat pattern of toy palm-
trees and groups of mud huts. Hard-
acre drew back from this low parapet,
but Rahlo was behind him.

“If you pushed me over the side I
should fall down, and down, and down,”
she murmured.

“Don’t talk so wildly, Rahlo.”

She leant against him, and he felt the
beat of her heart. Then she laughed.
A sudden panic seized Hardacre. Was
Rahlo pressing against him with the in-
tention of edging him towards the side
of the platform?

He felt a sick fear creep over him.
Perhaps he was going to faint. He
stood there swaying like a flame of a
candle in the draught.

“Rahlo, save me, I can’t keep away
from the brink of the cursed place. . . .
For heaven’s sake, help me!”

But Rahlo’s body was slowly but
surely pressing him towards the edge.
He had no power to resist the gentle
pressure, no will to fight with an over-
mastering fear.

He toppled and fell. Then every-
thing spun before him in a golden-
tinted whirligig. He heard Rahlo
laugh. . . .

The next morning the doctor called
at the Trianon Hotel as he had
arranged.

“Is Mr. Hardacre awake yet?” he
asked the hall-porter, swinging himself
off his horse at the door.

The porter shook his head. “No,”
he said. “He has not buzzed down for
his tea or hot water yet.”

“I’ll just have a look at him,” said
the doctor. “If he’s in a nice peaceful
sleep I will not disturb him.”

When the doctor entered the bed-
room, Hardacre had departed this life
eight hours before. He had rolled out
of bed and the body lay on its back,
hands clenched by its side, and the neck
was broken. In the staring eyes was
written terror that cannot be expressed
by the printed word.

“Must have been scared to death
about something,” said the doctor, to
the manager of the hotel, who had
entered behind him.

The manager walked over and knelt
by the doctor’s side.

“As far as I can make out,” said the
doctor at length, rising, “he died from
a broken neck, but it’s all against
medical science.”

“What’s against medical science?”
the manager asked.

“Why, a broken neck from a fall of
three feet,” answered the doctor. “The
fall seems to have jolted his whole
system to pieces and dislocated several
joints. A most inexplicable case . . .”

The doctor nodded and muttered
some very mysterious and technical
phrases which died away as he pulled
the counterpane from the bed and
covered Hardacre’s staring eyes.

The Suicide God

Oriental Vengeance in London

by ROLAND WILD

N OT even the chief of the Kannu
Clan, who must have been
chiefly responsible, could have
said how it happened. He was called
“Elder,” and was reputed to know
everything. But probably he would
have bowed and hissed at you in the
manner of his race, and expressed com-
plete ignorance, save perhaps for a
polite whisper that perhaps it was be-
cause there was a big fire in the rich
quarter of San Francisco that night.
But suddenly, two minutes after the
fire-engines went roaring through the
streets with the bell ringing and the
horses’ hoofs making a grand tattoo
on the rough streets, the clan war
was on.

There was not a man or woman of

the Clans Kannu and Miko who did
not know all about it inside four
minutes. At one moment they were
drinking green tea in the crazy roof
gardens of the Chinese quarter, and the
next moment they seemed all to be
armed with knives and in the streets,
swarming down the twisted staircases
like sailors down the rigging. “Wai
Heil” they yelled, and were in the
streets looking for trouble. They
found it.

It was probably because the police
were busy at the fire that the war grew
to the proportions of a historic event.
But the fire was an event, anyway. The
great fire of San Francisco remains
longer in the public memory, and for
good reason, than the Clan war between

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

the Kannus and the Mikos. That is,
among people who know little of
Chinese honour. Among the Chinese, of
course, the fire rightly took secondary
place.

The Street of the Thousand Pleasures
runs right up towards heaven, and even
to-day you can get an idea of the
turmoil there must have been on its
slopes when knives were out and police
were busy elsewhere. The history-
books say little about it, for in those
days it was expected that there should
be fights in San Francisco.

But according to the few garbled
accounts that have survived, the victory
for the Clan Kannu was a decisive one.
They had certainly brought their
customs with them when they came
over the Pacific to make a Chinese
colony here on the hills of the great
pioneer city of America.

It was a silent battle, save for the
groans of the injured and the dying.
There were no guns in the quarter.
They fought and won with the strength
of their wrists and the agility of their
legs.

You could see, up and down the
street, a thousand little battles, man
against man, twisting and straining and
groaning. Most of the time you would
have said that this was a series of
polite wrestling matches.

But then, if you watched carefully,
you would see the glint of a knife, and
you would know that this was business,
religious business, at that. For the
Kannus were intent on obtaining their
idol, the idol of the Yellow Ears.

Ten minutes after the fire-bells had
sounded, there was not a Chinese on
the street who did not belong to the
Clans of Kannu or Miko. From the
paper windows of innumerable crowded
rooms the other inhabitants of the
Chinese quarter watched the struggle,
but they knew better, and were too
honourable to favour one side or the
other.

Women were down there, too, twist-
ing and turning, battling between the

tall houses that formed the Street of
the Thousand Pleasures. There were
gallant forays on one house after
another, and the fights continued up
the crazy stairways and even on to the
balconies that clung so precariously to
the leaning houses.

More than once a balcony gave way,
and on to the milling crowd below there
fell two brocade-clad figures, still claw-
ing at each other as they fell, the knives
flickering in the pale glow of lanterns
as they passed the various floors and
crashed sickeningly on the ground.

But after a time, according to the
accounts, it was obvious that the spon-
taneous battle was going all one way.
For the first time for a century, the
Kannus were in the ascendancy, and
more and more you heard the rallying
cry of their clan as one after the other,
the Mikos were vanquished and slain or
chased into ignominious defeat.

A dozen small fires had been started
in the apartment-houses in the street,
but these were quickly extinguished by
agile men accustomed to the hazard of
fire. The shouts, the screams, the crash
of bodies and the crackle of flames
made this a nightmare scene, fitting for
the making of Clan history. Lucky it
is, said the old men of the street, that
the police are busy elsewhere.

But eventually it was obvious that
victory had been won. The turmoil be-
low resolved into a steady progress in
one direction. The Kannus had won,
and were going for the idol. Perhaps,
said the old men, it would be the end of
Clan warfare for many years to come.

When the dawn came out of the
Pacific, and the morning fog rolled over
the city of hills, there was little to be
seen in the Chinese quarter that gave
evidence of the grim battle of the night.
The clans had taken away their dead
and dying. And men in those days
asked no questions. The Kannus had
the idol of the Yellow Ears, but the
gold-scrabbling white men of the coast
could not be expected to take interest
in such a domestic quarrel.

THE SUICIDE GOD

THE NEXT BATTLE

The old men
who predicted
peace for a
number of years
were right,
though even
they, wise as
they were, could
not have fore-
seen the circum-
stances o f the
next clan battle.
Fifty years had
gone by before
the last of the
Kannus battled again for the idol. And
the scene was no lantern-lit, paper-gay
street on a hill. The scene was off the
Strand in London.

Nor was the last of the Kannu Clan
a man who would have received the
approval of the elders of the Street of
a Thousand Pleasures. The clan had
brought its customs across the Pacific,
but the customs had not survived the
years of modernity and hustle. Almost
the only relics of the clan left were the
name and the possession of the idol.
Kannu, he called himself. Mister
Kannu, American citizen, by profession
a juggler, terms by arrangement with
agent.

Now, as he walked along the Strand
to the Alba Hotel, the exclusive supper
resort where he was performing in the
cabaret, he fitted into the cosmopolitan
background perfectly. There was no
trace of the East left, you would say.
Mr. Kannu’s smart tweeds, pinched
Homburg hat and brown shoes made
him a typical citizen of every capital
in the world.

“Hello there, Kannu 1”

He stopped in his tracks, turned, and
greeted his acquaintance with a wide
sweep of the arm that was typically
American.

“Mikol” he said. “Where have you
dropped in from?”

The two Chinese shook hands,

93

slapped each other on the back, grinned
with genuine pleasure at the meeting.
Professional rivals with the tinsel and
the multi-coloured balls, smiling stars
of the cabaret floors all over the world.

“How are things?” said Miko. “I’m
in from Stockholm, start to-morrow at
the Paramount for a week, then maybe
the big bottle-parties for a month.
Business good here, they tell me. How’s
the act, Kannu? Still pulling them in?”

“Good enough,” said Kannu. “I’ve
got a new variation I’ll show -you.”

“We’re quits, then,” said Miko. “I’ve
got something that rolls ’em in the
aisles. My agent suggested it. Bit of
history, kind of. I wouldn’t know much
about it, but the agent said it was the
genuine stuff. Ever hear of the Suicide
God? Little fellow with yellow ears.
Gets a laugh, I can tell you . . .”

Kannu stopped smiling. The light
went out of his eyes and he stared in-
tently at his friend.

“Yellow Ears?” he said. “You use
the idol in the act? The Suicide God,
Miko? But — but you shouldn’t do
that. I have it with me here. It’s
always been with me. Miko — you
shouldn’t do that I”

“Boloney,” said Miko. “I’m using it
— see? I don’t know nothing about it.
My agent says it’s a good angle, and
I’ll say he’s right. Puts glamour into
the show. Authentic, and all that.
Come along and see the rehearsal at six
to-night at the Paramount. You’ll like
it. O.K.? See you there, then.”

Mr. Kannu walked along the Strand
without seeing the busy life around
him. When, rarely, he indulged in any
kind of self-examination, he saw him-
self as an American gentleman who had
inherited, together with his Chinese
descent, a wonderful and profitable
dexterity with batons, rubber balls,
oranges, chromium wands, tables, fans
and coloured paper. This dexterity was
his living, and a very good living too.

If anyone had reminded him that he
was a Chinese, he would have smiled,
looked slightly puzzled, and shown hia

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

94

passport. He considered himself to be
Chinese in the same way that other
Americans admitted they were left-
handed. But sometimes, if he ever be-
trayed himself in some act that was
“oriental,” he took himself severely to
task.

He was an American citizen, he told
himself. He had never seen the Far
East, and he probably never would go.
It made him all the more angry, there-
fore, that his instinct still reverenced
the Kannu idol.

More than once Mr. Kannu had
looked doubtfully at the small polished
teak box in which there resided, in a
lining of green silk, the idol of the
Yellow Ears. True, it took up only a
small comer of his personal suitcase,
but there were awkward moments when
he had been asked to explain its pre-
sence to customs men, and often enough
he had considered putting it in his pro-
fessional luggage, where it could easily
pass as a stage prop essential for his
act.

But something stopped him from
doing that. Angrily, he denied to him-
self that he was afraid of insulting
Yellow Ears. But he knew it was true.

Then there was another matter that
worried him greatly. From the time
when he learnt pidgin English at hid
father’s knee, almost, he had worn a
knife. It wasn’t carried, it was worn.
Throughout his life it had lain flat
against his forearm, attached by two
thin bands that could be slipped with a
deft movement of the wrist.

When he was a youth, he had gained
renown for the skill and speed with
which the knife had come sliding into
his hand, ready for use. For years now
he had never tried the trick. He did
not even know if his fingers were slim
enough, deft enough any more. In
truth, he did not like the knife being
there at all. He had tried to rid him-
self of the habit of wearing it.

One night, he had left it off when he
dressed for a show. He never left it off
again, for it was one of the most disas-

trous nights of his career. He had never
been so clumsy, and afterwards decided
that there was more than mere habit in
the wearing of the knife; it was a
symbol. Then, catching himself out as
he thought that, he called himself
several kinds of a fool.

LOUSY BOLONEY

behind the cabaret stage of the Alba.

“Listen, Kannu,” he said, “I’ve got
news for you. You know Miko? He’s
a rotten conjuror, but he’s got brains.
I’ve just heard about his new show.
They’re all talking about it. He’s got
a fake idol that he calls Yellow Ears
the Suicide God, and he’s rigged it up
so the ears move. Sounds pretty lousy,
but I tell you it’s the goods. Mystic,
see?

“He uses a lot of build-up, saying
it’s the genuine Miko idol, kind of
family crest, see? Says his family
brought it across from China to Frisco,
and his grandfather was the big chief
of the clan. Get it? It’s the goods, all
right, and we’ve got to think up some-
thing to beat it. Can’t have people
even making comparisons between you
and another Chinese juggler, you know.
What about it?”

THE SUICIDE GOD

“No,” said Kannu.

“What d’you mean, no?" said the
agent. “You’ve got the best show in
town, or any other town, and I want it
kept the best. The Suicide God, that’s
what he calls it. Claims it makes its
owner do himself in if it’s abused.
Boloney, but the customers like it. And
it’s a good idea. Wish I’d thought of
it myself.

“We got to keep thinking in this busi-
ness, Kannu. Efficiency is not enough,
as Napoleon or somebody said. What
about you and me getting together and
thinking up something that’ll knock
Miko for a row of ocean liners?"

“No,” said Kannu.

The agent left stormily, and Kannu
mechanically went through his morn-
ing rehearsal. As he tossed the balls
and balanced the shining poles, the
smile came back to his face, for that
was part of the act. But his mind was
working independently of his familiar
routine.

Into his heart there came something
of the same ferocity and fanaticism
that had inspired his ancestors who had
fought on the Hill of the Thousand
Pleasures for the honour of the idol.
Kannu knew nothing of the history of
his clan, but he had been bred with
that reverence as he had been bred with
the gift of his profession and the black
hair of his race. The idol of the Yellow
Ears was being desecrated. Whatever
the cost, he must defend it.

Six o’clock saw him at the Para-
mount Hotel, and the serious observer
might have noticed that when he left
the Alba, he looked at his watch, and
timed his journey across the Strand
very carefully. If you could have
looked into that solemn mind, you
could have seen that Kannu was even
counting his footsteps, and that when
he reached the staff entrance, where the
artistes entered, he took mental note of
the direction to the dressing-rooms.
Under his arm, Kannu carried a brown
paper parcel. In it was the precious

95

teak idol that he had carried round
Europe for so many years.

With a polite greeting for Miko, he
took his place in the vast empty
restaurant to watch the rehearsal. Cer-
tainly, he thought, Miko had improved.
He was not so good as Kannu himself,
but he was still good. Only the skilled
eye of Kannu could see the slight
strains that Miko put on himself, the
clumsy gestures that an audience would
not see.

“No," said Kannu to himself. “I
have nothing to fear from Miko. He
is good, but he is not so good as
Kannu . . .”

The orchestra wa3 approaching the
crescendo, and Kannu knew that the
desecration of Yellow Ears was to
begin. It was an impressive build-up
for the finale, and the agent had not
lied when he said it was well presented.
First, a manager came on the stage and
told the story of “the ancestral god of
the Clan Miko.” Kannu gripped his
seat, a small vein pulsing in his fore-
head.

“The name of the God,” said the
manager, “is, when translated, Yellow
Ears, and, ladies and gentlemen, it has
a sinister reputation. We are about to
present the Suicide Godl The God that
demands the suicide of its subject I
The God that has been worshipped by
the ancient Clan of Miko for a thousand
years, which has exacted its toll of
Miko’s ancestors since the dawn of
time I

“Unique in the world, ladies and
gentlemen, Miko dares to show you the
idol to which he himself, at some time
or another, will be victim! Ladies and
gentlemen, we present Yellow Ears, the
Suicide Godl”

Even here, at a dress rehearsal,
Kannu felt himself impressed. It was
great showmanship. And when Miko
came on the stage in yellow robes, bear-
ing aloft the exact replica of Yellow
Ears, Kannu felt queasy in the stomach.
Miko’s agent came over and crowed
over him.-

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

96

“What do you think of it, Kannu?”
he said. “Good stuff, isn’t it? You see
that idol? Copied exact from an
original drawing, the experts say. Cost
me a packet, too. The story is O.K.,
too. Real bit of history. We take
trouble over our acts, Kannu. Got a
Chinese scholar to dig up the facts for
us.

“You mean,” said Kannu. “You
mean that is true — that there was a
Suicide God?”

“Copper-bottomed,” said the agent.
“Miko wanted the exact model, and we
made it, from pictures in the British
Museum. It’s exact to measure, I be-
lieve. Not that the customers would
mind if it wasn’t. But I suppose you
Eastern gents like to be exact, what?”

“Yes,” said Kannu mechanically.
“Yes, we like to be exact.”

The show was a shock to him. Not
only was the new act a novelty that was
likely to draw, but he felt it gripping
even himself, who saw through this tom-
foolery as pure ballyhoo. But a more
serious thought crowded his brain; the
idol that he thought meant so little to
him, was being desecrated.

Silently, under cover of his seat, he
began uncovering the original Yellow
Ears. When he came out of Miko’s
dressing - room, after congratulations
and a genial “see you later!” he still
had a brown paper parcel of the same
size. But, home in his flat, he tossed it
carelessly into his trunk, in a way that
he had never treated the old bit of teak
that he had carried round for so many
years.

On the night of Miko’s opening at
the Paramount, Kannu slipped off the
stage with the usual burst of applause
ringing in his ears after the ten-thirty
cabaret. The smile faded from his wide
face as he padded silently to his dress-
ing-room, through the ranks of chorus-
girls waiting to go on for the finale.
Kannu always rested between shows,
pulling a dressing-gown round his thin-
clad form, putting his sandalled feet on

a chair and reading the evening paper,
drinking lime-juice and soda.

But to-night was Miko’s opening
show with the novelty “Suicide God.”

THE ALIBI

As he went past
the stairway leading
to the stage - door-
man’s cubby-hole, he
called: “Joe, I’ve got
a message for you.
Come up and get it,
will you?”

The old man liked
to be sent messages
at this time of the evening, and Kannu
knew it. Round the corner from the
Alba there was a private bar that
seemed empty between ten-thirty and
eleven unless the stage door-keeper
dropped in on some pretext or another.

Kannu wrote a hurried message on
the hotel notepaper.

“Dear Miko,” he wrote, while the
door-keeper watched him, tongue lick-
ing his lips in anticipation. “This is to
wish you the best of luck with the new
show. It ought to go big. Yours,
Kannu.”

“Take it over to Miko at the Para-
mount, Joe, and here’s half a crown.
He opened there to-night, and I forgot
to send him a wire. O.K. Let me know
when you get back . . .”

The doorman lumbered heavily down
the stairs. Behind him there was a
slim shadow, noiseless on thin sandals,
indistinguishable in a long macintosh,
hat pulled down over the eyes. Kannu
watched the doorman make his way
over the road and round the corner to
the private bar of the inn. As the swing
doors closed behind him, he stepped
steadily and unhurriedly over the route
that he had already timed so minutely.

He stopped at the Paramount stage-
door to listen. He was a dark shadow
merging with the walls, out of range of
the pale entrance-light. Under the door
there was no break in the stream of

THE SUICIDE GOD

light. He pressed gently on the door.
Before him there stretched only the
empty concrete corridor, an iron stair-
way. On noiseless soles he was across
the corridor and up the stairs in a flash.

Miko’s dressing-room was third on
the left. The dark shadow fled across,
and as it moved, the old trick came
back to Kannu. A flick of the wrist
and the knife was in his hand. The
American citizen had not forgotten his
skill. . . .

“Why, Kannu ” said Miko.

“Glad to see you. Come to congratu-
late me? That’s real nice of you,
Kannu.”

“Look I” said Kannu, and directed a
long steady finger at the idol that faced
him on the dressing-room table.

Miko turned. As he did so the knife
flashed, flicked out and was buried in
his heart.

There was no sound. Miko crumpled,
sagged forward, the knife still quiver-
ing in the thin fabric of his juggler’s
tunic. A slim and silent figure flashed
through the door, raced down the
stairs, across the dark street with foot-
steps unhurried.

As Kannu crossed the Strand, he saw
Joe, the doorkeeper, push out of the
private bar, waving a “Good night,
all!” to the assembled company. A
minute later Kannu was in his dress-
ing-room, a gaudy robe over his
shoulders, the evening paper over his
knees, lime-juice and soda at his side.

“The Suicide God?” he said. “I
wonder if it is possible. Old Yellow
Ears of the Clan Kannu! Well, I guess
funny things have happened in history
— certainly in our history! The Suicide
God!”

Midnight at the “Alba.” The big
restaurant had filled up with the after-
theatre crowd, and the chatter and hum
of a vast crowd reached its height.
Kannu was ready for his second show.
Joe had come back, panting slightly
from his exertion, but vastly pleased to
report that he had duly delivered the
message.

97

“Gave it to the doorkeeper with me
own ’ands,” said Joe. “Any little job
you want, any time o’ night, ask me
again, sir. And thank you, sir.”

“Thank you, Joe,” said Kannu.

A round of applause from the other
side of the curtain told Kannu that the
dancers were off the floor. An encore?
The ballroom was silent again as they
returned for one minute and a half, and
another outburst of applause followed
them.

Kannu rose, looked at himself again
in the mirror, brushed an infinitesimal
speck from his smooth satin tunic, and
walked down to the curtains as the
music surged into the grand crescendo
of “Oriental” music that announced
him. As he reached the curtain, the
smile grew and broadened on his face.
And at the same time, with the old un-
conscious gesture, his fore-arm muscles
surged to feel the knife ready in its
bands. . . .

He faltered, and the smile died on
his face. He had forgotten his helpless-
ness without the knife.

“Kannu 1” said the stage manager.
“Hey, Kannu! You’re on! They’re
vamping the entrance for you already 1
Kannu!”

He was on the little stage. The smile
was back, and the crowd was clapping
for the well-known, the inimitable, the
adroit little Chinese with the wide grin
and the perfect symmetry of motion.
His mind was divided, half directed
upon the routine that lay before him,
half panicking because a cog in the
machine was missing. It was absurd,
he told himself. His perfectly trained
body, his perfectly trained mind, could
go through with the thing without fear.
Everything was the same, he told him-
self. Everything but the feel of a blade
of steel on his forearm.

Yes, he was perfect. His assistant
gave him the central pole of shining
aluminium, and it was up on his chin,
and the two compensating weights were
balanced on its cross-bar, in the twink-
ing of an eye. He watched the centre

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

98

of the bar, but he knew he could shut
his eyes and still hold the intricate
balance. The tinsel and the twin pillars,
each resting on a fraction of the cross-
bar, were in place. His chin scarcely
moved to adjust the delicacy of the
feat, and his smile remained painted on
his smooth brown face.

Such things were mechanical. But
now, while he was doing mechanical
things, his mind raced away, and he
saw above, the bright pyramid of tinsel
and coloured silk and shining metal,
the face of Miko as he turned towards
the wall, all smiles. He saw, too, the
eyes of the idol as they gazed at
murder. With one hand he felt his
assistant give him the wand and the
plates for his spinning act, and while
he gazed still above the crazy super-
structure balanced by a hair’s breadth
above him, he went into his plate-spin-
ning act.

The music was reaching its crescendo
again. The first part of the act was
nearly over. As the high note was
reached, he flicked his chin, and the
pole tilted, the cross-bar was tossed
aside, the twin pyramids fell sideways
into his waiting, flickering hands.

Yes, Kannu was perfect. There was
nothing, he thought, that could upset
the scientific magic of his art. As he
bowed, the wide smile growing wider
as the crowd shouted his applause, he
turned back to the curtains. Behind,
looking through the side screens, were
two stranger in blue serge suits.

POLICE

“Th ey’ve
found him,
then,” Kannu
thought.
“They know
he’s dead.
They think
maybe I killed
him.”

Then he
turned again

to his assistant. The man had his chair
ready, his multi-coloured boxes and his
mouthpiece ready. Kannu gripped the
chair, lightly and gently, and a second
later he was standing on his hands. He
steadied himself a half-second, took
one hand away. His lithe body re-
mained stationary in the air, heels
together, his back a perfect arc. The
assistant gave him the mouthpiece, and
he twisted his head round and the
assistant fitted the shining pole into the
socket. As the cross-bar went on
swiftly, Kannu thought:

“Those are the police. They have
found Miko and they have come to see
if I can do my act. If I cannot do my
act, they will think I killed him.”

The music was playing softly now,
and the audience, quelled into silence
by the tense atmosphere, watched
Kannu, the world’s greatest conjuror.
They loved the effortless ease of that
trim body poised on so slim a wrist.
They looked at the muscles of his neck
as he strained round to face the ceiling.
They saw the precision and confidence
with which he tossed the shining
cylinders aloft, wondered at the sim-
plicity of the feat.

“I am Kannu, the perfect,” he whis-
pered. “This is my life, and I cannot
fail. This is my life.”

The assistant saw beads of sweat on
his brow as he moved swiftly to hand
him the bamboo rod and the spinning
plate. Getting old, Kannu? Off train-
ing, Kannu? His hand, as he touched
it, was cold and clammy. Can you
make it, Kannu?”

“This is my life. I cannot fail. The
Suicide God, he called it. Old Yellow
Ears. And I am an American citizen,
and I cannot fail.”

There were two seconds of tension
when Kannu had piled up the astonish-
ing pyramid of flimsy trinkets above
him, balanced in the mouthpiece, and
while he twirled the spinning plate.
The spinning plate was nothing — just
a piece of showmanship. Nor was the
balance of the cubes and the pillars a

THE SUICIDE GOD oo

difficult feat, but before the orchestra,
reached its peak, Kannu would swing
out his legs, then lower them gently
until his neck seemed twisted to break-
ing-point.

Two men watched, without emotion,
from the wings.

“Great act,” said one. “He’s the boy,
all right.”

“It’s easy,” said the other. “Easy
for Chinks.”

“One second,” Kannu thought. “I
have won, without the knife. . . .”

The orchestra reached the climax,
and the lithe body curved up and round
and down to the floor while the super-
structure jumped and fell in a dozen
pieces into their hands. Kannu’s smile
was back as he bowed, ran back off the
stage.

“Listen, Kannu,” said one of the
men through the uproar of applause.
“We’ve got something to tell you.”

“Yes?” said Kannu, smiling still.

“You know Miko,” said the man.
“Friend of yours? Well, I’m sorry. He
took his act a bit too seriously. Had a
so-called Suicide God on the stage, and
now he’s killed himself. Stuck a knife
in his heart to-night. Well, the act
didn't go so well, I’m told, maybe that’s
why he did it. We found your note, so
we came to tell you. . . .”

“But — but that’s tragic,” said
Kannu.

“Of course it’s tragic. Took himself

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too seriously. But then, maybe, he
wasn’t enough of an actor. Not like
you, you’re an actor, Kannu . .

“Sure,” said Kannu. “Not like I’m
an actor . . .”

In his flat, an hour later, he took up
the brown paper parcel containing
Miko’s idol. “Not like you, you’re an
actor, too,” he said to the idol. There
was another knife in his bag, the exact
replica of the one he had worn on his
fore-arm for so many years. He picked
it up, turned it over, and suddenly the
old smile came back to his face.

As if on an impulse, he put on his
hat, stuffed the idol under his coat, and
went out on the Embankment. Behind
him, like a majestic backcloth for a
tragedian, stood the brightly-lit fagade
of the Alba Hotel; in front, the dark
water, the ripples catching at regular
intervals the sheen of the pale Embank-
ment lamps.

There, if they had been watching
down the centuries, the gods of ancient
clans of China might have seen the end
of a dynasty. Flippantly, Kannu drove
the quivering blade into the teak idol,
and with a wide sweep of his arm,
swung it far into the dark river.

Then he turned on his heel, a smiling,
trim-built Western gentleman, with
only a trace of the East in his placid
eyes.

“American citizens,” he said to him-
self, “don’t carry knives.”

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The Finger of
Kali

by

GARNETT RADCLIFFE

M Y advice to anyone proposing
to loot an Indian temple is
don’t. You may be lucky and
get away with something worth having,
but if you do you’ll be the exception.
Hindu priests are as a rule mild and
timid. But where the safety of the
temple treasures, of which they’re
hereditary guardians, is concerned,
they’re vindictive, merciless and unfor-
giving.

Apropos of which I propose to relate
this story. It divides itself into two
parts, separated by an interval of fifteen
years. The first concerns myself, when
I was a very young soldier stationed
at Fattapore, in the United Provinces.

I was an ambitious youngster in
those days. Not, I regret to say, for
military glory, but for civilian flesh-
pots. Quick money was what I yearned
for. When I’d got it I was going to buy
myself out, invest in a yacht and half a
dozen cars or so, and live in an English
country mansion, with a beautiful wife.

Luckily, or unluckily for me, Fatta-
pore was one of the centres of the gold-
hiding industry. It was steamy, hot
and very sacred. A teeming, spawning
land of mango groves and luscious
jungle, where even the birds and
animals died young. They had to. In
that greenhouse of fierce fertility,
everything was pushing everything else
on.

I wasn’t interested in the flora and
fauna. What I liked looking at were
the gilded temples, with their domes
and grotesque carvings and sly-eyed,
shaven priests. It wasn’t the architec-
ture interested me either. What I
thought about was the treasure they

probably contained, and when I passed
one I eyed it as a burglar might eye the
Bank of England.

But I never ventured into one except
once. It was a disused temple about
five miles from Fattapore. It was
hidden right away in the bagh (jungle)
and I came across it by accident.

I’d been peacock-shooting with a
couple of pals. Somehow I’d got separ-
ated from the others, and when I tried
to get back to them I missed my way.
It’s easy to do that in thick bagh.
Paths seem to close themselves behind
your back, and there’s a greenish-
striped light which confuses your mind.

I wasn’t scared. I’d my rifle with
me and that gives a chap a lot of
courage. Especially if he’s never used
one except on the ranges. I wasn’t
afraid of meeting a tiger — I was pessi-
mistic; I wouldn’t.

I’d an organ accompaniment as I
walked on. There always is an organ
playing in the jungle, and the dreary
tune it always plays is, “You’re only
a damn-fool man.” The insects, the

THE FINGER OF KALI

IOI

birds and the monkeys furnish the
music. And there are other things that
cough and laugh and watch you, but
you never see what they are.

The farther I went on the less bold
and carefree I became. I was wet
through with perspiration and my head
was swimming. And I wasn’t as hot as
I should have been. In fact, I was
quite shivery. That and the fact that
my teeth felt tight, should have warned
me I was in for a go of jungle fever.
It didn’t, because I was too damn green.

Then I came to the temple. It was
down in a hollow and all but hidden
by jungle grass and bamboo shoots.
They were so high and thick that they
blotted out the sun. It was dark and
cool and there was a hidden stream
somewhere that made an intermittent
chuckling sound like a mischievous old
man laughing.

When you’ve lived a bit in India you
sort of get to recognise the places that
aren’t quite right. If I’d known as
much then as I do now I’d have given
that temple a wide berth. For it
emphatically was not right. Wooden-
headed recruit as I was then, I felt as if
something was warning me to get
away.

Did I obey the warning? Did I
snakes! I was the intrepid young
adventurer looking for hidden treasure.
A fine reckless free-booter I felt as I
advanced holding my bandook (rifle)
like a kid playing pirates.

It seemed very cold and still once
I’d got inside. After the jungle it was
like suddenly finding oneself in a vault.
The inside was in better repair than
you’d have expected. The mosaic
floor, the carvings, the shrine and the
incense-burners were much the same as
they must have been when the place
was used. Only the roof of the dome
had gone badly. There was a gaping
hole in the tiles, through which I could
see the sky.

Then I noticed a fresh wreath of
marigolds on the shrine. I hadn’t to
scratch my head about who’d put it

there, for a priest was sitting at the
foot of the shrine with his” eyes rolled
up, his legs in the lotus-posture and
his hands on his knees. He looked
about a thousand and may have
weighed four stone. He’d a bald head
and a little puckered evil clean-shaven
face about the size of a baby’s.

I didn’t mind him. I’d seen holy
men in trances till I wouldn’t turn my
head to look at one. Even the wooden
pin he had driven through his cheeks
didn’t give me a thrill. I’d seen his
brothers by the thousand in Benares.

Even if he’d woken up he couldn’t
have done anything. I was a hefty
youngster and I had a rifle. I turned
my back on the little naked concertina
and started grouting round for treasure.

I’d never been in a Hindu temple
before, and my idea that the idols would
have ruby eyes for the plucking was
soon disillusioned. Nor were they made
of gold, as I’d expected. Clay, mixed
with chopped straw, seemed to be what
the sculptors had economised with.

INTO THE PIT

So I thought
I’d try the base-
ment. There was
a slab in the
flooring near the
entrance that
looked as if it
might be a trap-
door of sorts. I
hove on to an
iron ring in the centre and pulled like
Billy-ho.

It wouldn’t shift for quite a bit. I
kept . stopping to wipe my face, and
every time I did it I looked at the
priest. He drew my eyes like a dead
body. You know what it’s like in a
room where there’s someone laid out
and you don’t like to turn your back?

He didn’t budge. He was as still as
the idols themselves. And yet I knew
he was watching me and thinking about

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

102

me. Although he hadn’t moved a
muscle, he’d changed like a rock does
when the light alters.

He knew what I was up to and was
laughing at me. I had the feeling so
strong that I shouted at him he’d get
a thick ear if he didn’t stop s mili ng,
I was a bit wrought-up by that time.
The gloom and silence of the place had
got on my nerves.

Then the slab gave so suddenly I
nearly got a fall. It was as if someone
who’d been holding it had let go. But
I saw a flight of greasy, worn stone
steps, and was so excited I forgot to be
scared.

They’d take me to the treasure if
there was any. I began to go down
them striking matches. I was on the
alert for anything, but all I noticed was
a queer fusty smell like cockroaches
and damp paper.

It seemed to be a sort of well I was
going into. A round shaft cut in natural
rock under the temple, if you get me.
The sides were wet and glistening and
it was very cold. If I’d had room in my
mind to think of anything except loot,
I might have imagined myself walking
down into a deep grave.

Not me. All I was dreaming of was
what I’d find at the bottom. Gold
mohurs and jade elephants and neck-
laces and diamonds like pigeon’s eggs.
It would be all heaped up in a bronze
chest. Ivory pagodas, jewelled fans
and little golden gods with ruby eyes.

It takes a lot to scare a fellow when
he’s chased by a gold-bug. Skeletons
wouldn’t have turned me back; I’d
have kicked them out of the way with-
out turning a hair. I was never one to
mind ghosts at any time. And just
then with my rifle in my hand and the
lust for loot gripping my throat, I’d
have dared anything.

Down I clattered into that well.
There was just enough light from
where I’d lifted the slab for me to see
the bottom. And then I stopped in my
tracks. I don’t know if my hair rose
up and my tongue clove to my palate

like happens in books, but I do know
I was scared stiff. Ugh! I remember
I’d a feeling as if my joints were jelly
and I’d fall if I moved.

I put my hand against the rock to
steady myself and then I began to go
up the stairs again. Backwards, for I
was afraid to take my eyes from the
thing I saw. That’ll show you how I
felt. If it had been just an ordinary
scare I’d have dropped my rifle and
bolted.

If the slab had been closed when I
reached the top, I believe I’d have
fallen down dead. But it wasn’t, and
I stepped out into the temple. Nothing
had moved. The old priest was still at
the shrine and everything was silent.

I walked out into the jungle sweat-
ing like a horse. I felt like a chap does
when he’s had such a narrow escape he
doesn’t like to think back. Then I
heard that chuckling stream again. And
my mind was so upset that it seemed
to me it was speaking in English.

“The young man was excused for his
youth. . . . The young man was ex-
cused for his youth. . . . The young
man was excused for his youth ...”

Those were the words I thought I
heard. Uttered in a sort of wheezy,
croaking voice as if a very old man
suffering from asthma were speaking.
Then the voice got fainter and fainter
until there was only the chuckling of
the water I couldn’t see.

I went away quick. No more dreams
of loot for me. All I wanted was to get
as far away from that unholy temple
as I could. I tell you I went through
the bagh like a rabbit with the dogs
after it.

It seemed hours before I hit a track
that took me to cleared ground. That
was when I sat down and wondered
what had come over me. Why had I
stampeded like a scared cat at sight of
a piece of polished stone?

That was all I’d seen. Just a plain
finger-shaped piece of stone sticking up
like a pedestal from the floor of the
well. Round and smooth, about six

THE FINGER OF KALI

feet high and two in diameter. A bud-
ding pillar like you see in any stalactite
cave.

There’d been nothing else. No
bronze chests, or skeletons or any junk
of that sort. Just the stone finger. But
when I remembered its rounded top
that had been polished by something
until it was as smooth and shiny as
black glass, I felt cold and sick and
shuddery.

I was put in hospital when I got back
to barracks. Sandfly fever was what
the doctor said. Very likely he was
right. I was puffed with bites.

I’d dreams in that hospital that I
don’t like to remember too clearly even
now. Always about the stone finger.
I’d be climbing it to get away from
something I was afraid to look at. Slip-
ping down no matter how I struggled —
you know how it is in nightmares? And
there was another nice dream in which
I’d see it standing at the foot of my
bed beckoning me to follow it. But
when the horror was getting more than
I could bear, a chuckling voice would
say: “The young man was excused for
his youth,” and I’d wake up sobbing
with relief.

LARRY AND REGAN

No more Hindu temples for me! I’d
had my lesson and became a reformed
loot-hound. Then the regiment was
moved to the Frontier, and I forgot to
wonder what it was I’d been excused
on account of my youth.

Here I shift to the second part.

103

Fifteen years have elapsed, as they say
in the books. I’d finished my time with
the army, transferred to State Railway
as time-expired N.C.O.s of good char-
acter commonly do, and become station
supervisor at Fattapore. The turn of
the wheel had brought me back to the
place where I’d commenced my service.

If India hadn’t made me rich, she’d
taught me a thing or two. She always
does if she doesn’t kill you first. I’d
learned enough, anyway, not to inter-
fere with native customs and not to go
prying into temples. Also, not to chuck
my weight about. What I mean is that
I’d learned that big strong he-men in
India who act as such usually end in
big, deep graves. The mild, timid
Hindu can’t use his fists, but he has
other methods of self-defence.

Messrs. Larry and Regan hadn’t
grasped that fact. When I saw them
first they’d been in India about three
weeks. They were still suffering from
the delusion that they were tough and
India was soft. India, who has sucked
vast armies of the toughest, bravest
warriors in the world into her sand like
little spilled drops of water!

And Larry and Regan thought they
could buck her! They thought they
were hellions, king-jacks, old-timers
and two-fisted, tough he-men. I dare-
say in their own environment they
would have been cocks of the walk.
Larry was tall with a face like burned
leather, sunken eyes and a hard, twisted
mouth. He was an Australian. Regan
was as tall as him and three times as
thick — a locomotive of a man with a
big bald head and a bristling red
moustache. He was an Irish American
who’d been mining in South Africa.

First time I saw the pair they were
the centre of a commotion; they usually
were. They’d just got off the Lucknow
express. Larry, who’d a bottle of
whisky sticking out of his coat side-
pocket, had introduced himself to
Fattapore by hitting a native. He was
too ignorant to know that seven down-
country natives in every ten suffer from

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

104

enlarged spleens and are apt to die if
you hit them even a soft blow.

This native wasn’t dead, but he was
wriggling about and making a noise
like a frying pig. Several hundreds of
the cousins, brothers and uncles were
holding a hostile demonstration at a
distance of two hundred yards. That
was as near as they dared go. I don’t
blame them. Larry and Regan must
have loomed in their eyes like a pair of
big red elephants.

I was there to preserve the dignity
of the station. Frankly, I wished I
wasn’t. I’d a wife and two children to
consider. However, difficulties are made
to be surmounted, and I surmounted
this one by inviting that pair of hellions
into my office for a drink.

They put on their coats and came
along. They were peaceable enough
and we talked. I gathered they’d come
to India from Cape Town on a busi-
ness enterprise. They’d put all they
could beg, steal or borrow into paying
the fare, and they anticipated that in
next to no time they’d be rolling
millionaires.

“We’ll be chartering a P. and O. to
take us to Paris,’’ Larry boasted. “Ex-
pense no object — champagne for break-
fast and whoopee all night. Better
come with us. Me and Mr. Regan do
things big. In the meantime, could you
oblige me with five dollars returnable
this day week with five thousand per
cent per second commission? Please
don’t refuse, for I feel hurt very
easily.”

I didn’t want him to feel that, and
gave him three rupees. Also some
advice about native lodging-houses.
They laughed at me when I mentioned
thugs.

“I guess we don’t need anyone to
hold our hands,” Regan said. “Come
on, Larry. The gentleman is tired of
our society and there isn’t any more
whisky.”

They swaggered out and my office
felt normal size again. I’m no chicken
myself, but I was as glad as if I’d said

good-bye after a lions’ tea-party.

That night they beat up the bazaar,
gate-crashed the barracks and threw
bottles at a sentry. It was a Mick
regiment, and when the guard turned
out there was a rough-house you’d
have heard a mile away. Larry and
Regan got away in a couple of ekkas
owned by officers and galloped round
the cantonment letting off revolvers.
When they were tired of that they took
possession of a native grog-shop, half
killed the proprietor and drank them-
selves dumb with rice-toddy. I record
these facts to show you what sort of
fellows they were.

I CONSULT THE FATHER

Three days
later they
disappeared
a s mysteri-
ou si y as
they’d come.
After an
interval t o
make sure
the mad
white men
had really gone, Fattapore breathed
again and took the barricades off the
windows.

For my part, I didn’t care what be-
came of them, provided they didn’t
come back. But I’d a friend who took
a more Christian view of things. Being
a missionary by trade, it was only right
he should.

On the second evening after those
larrikins had done the vanishing act,
Father Ackland, which was his name,
came into my bungalow looking
worried. He wanted to know if I’d
noticed them boarding a train for any-
where, and when I said I had not, he
frowned and shook his head.

“I’m worried about those two poor
lads,” he said. “They know nothing
about the country, and are liable to get
into trouble. I’ve heard a rumour they

THE FINGER OF KALI

were seen heading for the hills in a
stolen bullock-cart. Let’s hope they
don’t meet any thugs.”

I said amen to that. For the sake of
the thugs, I added. But Father Ackland
didn’t laugh. He knew India a lot
better than I did and was really
anxious.

Then he told me about a conversa-
tion he’d had with Regan. It seemed
that Regan, in a comparatively sober
state, had called at the mission
bungalow and asked a lot of questions
about tlie country round. Particularly
about the temples. He’d wanted to
know if there was a Hindu temple
called “The Temple of Kali’s Finger”
anywhere in the neighbourhood.

“I told him there was, and I advised
him not to go anywhere near it,” Father
Ackland told me. “It’s in ruins now,
but a hundred years ago the most
abominable rites were practised there.
The natives say the place is haunted
and shun the spot. I’m inclined to
think they’re wise. Twenty years ago
I visited it myself out of curiosity, and
— and I was excused on account of my
piety."

He’d croaked the last words. A good
imitation. And I knew he had seen the
same horror that I had. The finger of
Kali.

“Shake hands, padre,” I said. “I was
let out of hell too. They excused me on
account of my youth.”

I’d spoken in a thick chuckling voice.
Father Ackland turned pale and made
the sign of the cross.

“We were both mercifully pro-
tected,” he said. “I pray the same
mercy may be shown to Larry and
Regan. I’m certain they’ve gone to
that temple. Probably they’ve heard
some foolish story about jewels being
concealed there. God help them!”

“He’ll have to. I couldn’t go back,”
I said, my teeth chattering at the
thought.

I did go, though. If I hadn’t Father
Ackland would have gone alone. He
said it was his priestly duty. And I was

I0 5

even more scared of his thinking me a
coward than I was of the temple.

We went there and then in my car.
Since my soldiering days a road had
been cleared through the bagh to a
village not far from the temple. We
questioned the natives there and found
we were on the right trail. Those two
deluded idiots had landed in that
village that morning. They’d com-
mandeered the headman’s hut and
spent the day there drinking and sleep-
ing. In the evening the terrified vil-
lagers had watched them go into the
jungle in the direction of the temple.
"No, we didn’t stop them,” the head-
man told us, with chattering teeth.
“We thought Kali has summoned them
herself. She beckons with her finger
when she is hungry.”

No natives would accompany us. We
went off with lamps in our hands along
a beaten path that had been made by
worshippers going to the temple. It
had been tramped so hard by their
feet the jungle hadn’t swallowed it. I
like the bagh by night even less than
in the day-time. It’s as lively as a city
with the voices of things you can’t see.

By the time we got to the temple my
courage stood about at zero. The place
was even more sinister in the moon-
light. If Kali herself had come danc-
ing out jingling her necklace of skulls
she’d have matched the scene.

Without Father Ackland I couldn’t
have faced going in. But he gripped
my arm and we walked in together.
The mosaic floor rang hollow under our
feet. The grotesque gods grinned at us.
The place seemed to me literally to
smell of evil.

There was a little white-robed god
squatting by itself near the entrance.
Then I saw it wasn’t a god, but the
same little priest I’d seen before. He
wasn’t in a trance this time, but he
took no notice of us. He’d his head on
one side and he was smiling like a con-
tented baby. Harmless and innocent
he looked, that little Hindu priest!

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

xo6

TORTURE

We heard what he

K was listening to. Faint

screams. The priest
* was squatting near the
s i a 5 that was the
entrance to the well.
Father Ackland took him by the scruff
of the neck and chucked him half
across the temple. He crept away
whimpering.

We raised the slab. Then we could
really hear the screams. I wouldn’t
have thought human voices could have
made such sounds. They were more
like the cries of animals being burned
alive. Down the steps we rushed. And
then we saw them. Larry and Regan.
Trapped on Kali’s Finger. At least,
Regan was standing on it and Larry
was clinging to him and trying to get a
foothold.

They were fighting one another.
Screaming and battling like frantic
animals. Far too crazed with fear to
notice us.

For a second I couldn’t make out
what had sent them mad. But when I
lowered my lantern, I saw. The floor
of the well round Kali’s Finger was
literally carpeted with snakes. They
were wrestling above a forest of hooded
expectant heads with cold green eyes.

The snakes knew what was happen-
ing and were waiting. When Regan
nearly slipped the hooded heads
trembled like corn in a breeze. With
a superhuman effort he recovered his
balance and the snakes were again still.

We could only watch in horror.

We saw Regan drag out his revolver.

He hammered with the butt at Larry’s
face. But you can’t loose a madman’s
grip. Larry had Regan by the throat
and he held on, though blood dripped
from his Hung-back face.

It was a macabre dance of death.
They swayed backwards and forwards.
We saw Regan topple and slither like
a skater trying to keep his balance.

Larry wouldn’t let him recover. He
clung to him and they toppled out over
the snakes. For a horrible second they
seemed to be poised in mid-air. Then
with a scream that haunts me to this
day they fell. Right into the middle
of those mottled nightmares. There
was a writhing mix-up in the darkness,
a squirming tangle, and then nothing
except the rustle of scaly bodies slither-
ing over rock.

We fled the horrid scene. And when
we were once more outside in the moon-
light we both heard that devilish,
chuckling voice.

“They have been punished for their
wickedness," it was saying . . .

An explanation? I can’t give one for
certain, but both Father Ackland and I
have strong suspicions of that little
Hindu priest. Those fellows are adept
in mesmerism, ventriloquism, telepathy
and such-like arts. They protect their
temples with mental and not physiial
powers.

They were rock-cobras that killed
Regan and Larry. Sacred snakes of the
temple. Doubtless their ancestors had
played a grim part in that temple when
human sacrifices were made to Kali.

As for the supposed treasure. Well,
to anyone proposing to have a try at
getting it, my earnest advice is, don’t.

Beyond the
Last Blue
Mountains

The Airman and the
Mountain Climber

R. THURSTON
HOPKINS

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

108

R osamond blunden met

him whilst motoring from
Lourdes to Pierrefitte. He was
astride a rickety - looking Peugeot
motor-cycle which had emerged from
many road smashes, only to be patched
and fastened with copper wire to take
the road again. Rosamond was taking
her luxurious Gladiator car down to the
Pyrenees, where she intended to indulge
in a course of wild mountain scramb-
ling.

But at the moment her temper was
rather ruffled. Things were running
contrariwise. Her attache-case, with
her purse containing about £20, had
fallen out of the car and vanished, it
was raining cold grey ramrods and now
the car had coughed and spluttered it-
self to a standstill.

The motor-cyclist dismounted and
allowed his machine to fall back with
a crash on the grass verge at the side
of the road. Rosamond first of all
noticed his eyes — they were the palest
blue she had ever seen: the eyes of a
visionary or a dreamer. She thought
that they might belong to the kind of
man who invented things, or wrote
poems, or even made inflammatory
speeches in public squares.

“I fancy,” he drawled, “that you are
in trouble.”

“Oh, I don’t put it down as trouble,”
she replied briskly, “my car has let me
down; I have lost all my money and the
rain looks like keeping on for the rest
of the week.”

The motor-cyclist stroked his chin
and regarded Rosamond for a moment.

“I’m rather good at doctoring sick
motor-cars,” he said, flushing. “My
name is John Gawdy Nasmyth — un-
holy name, I know: but no fault of
mine.”

“Yes, yes,” snapped Rosamond.
“Real wet rain will wet us through, but
names will never hurt us. Do see if you
can get my car running again.”

On closer inspection, his eyes were
kind, and his hands fine, although per-
haps a little too sensitive to be capable

hands. Pie had untidy black hair, and
was without a hat; was tall, about
thirty years old, quick in action, and
supple rather than harshly strong.

This is what you would have noticed,
not much more, except the clothes — or
rather uniform he was wearing. Over a
dark blue tunic and trousers he wore a
long double-breasted military-looking
overcoat. It was faded, greasy and
torn, and Rosamond noted with a
shudder that two buttons were missing
and two others were hanging loose on
tag-ends of thread.

Careless and inefficient, thought
Rosamond. I suppose he is a motor-
coach-driver, or a hotel porter. Well,
well, I guess he will always remain a
porter.

“I think it’s mag. trouble holding you
up,” he said a few minutes later. “I’ll
soon put that right. I’ve got a kind of
genius for repairing magnetos.”

John noticed that Rosamond was
only wearing a flimsy dress.

“But please don’t stand in the rain.
Oughtn’t you to have a coat on?” he
suggested. “Yes, you ought . . .”

“Oh, never mind about that. I’m not
afraid of a little damp,” snapped Rosa-
mond. “Just get the bus running and
I’ll . . ”

She was just about to say I’ll pay you
well, when John looked up and smiled.
A smile of overpowering brightness,
like a boy who discovers that his father
isn’t angry with him when he confesses
that he has put a cricket-ball through
the greenhouse window. That smile
flung the words back in her throat.

“No mechanical defect beats me for
more than a few minutes,” said her
Samaritan, peeling off his heavy coat
and helping her into the thing.

THE COAT

Delicate tinkering with the magneto
followed. Then he jabbed at the starter
button and the engine sprang to life
with a sweet-oily mutter.

BEYOND THE LAST

Sitting comfortably behind the wheel
with the engine running Rosamond
thought:

“He’s wet to the skin; his clothes are
caked with mud through crawling under
my car, and he’s spent an hour of his
time to help me.”

She wondered who he was. His voice
indicated both breeding and education,
and she felt certain that he would be
hurt if she offered him money. So she
flashed one of her most ravishing smiles
on him, thanked him, and drove off.

During the last ten miles to Pierre-
fitte the encounter rather bothered her.
She felt that she had been a little
brassy, a little ungracious. And, some-
how, this John Gawdy Nasmyth (yes, it
was a dreadful name she agreed) had
emerged from the encounter with full
marks for gentle courtesy. His calm
demeanour had rather transposed
things — she had driven away feeling
small and ineffectual, leaving him cool
and master of the situation.

And — (botheration take itl) — she
had forgotten to give him back the
WTetched coat! She was still wearing it.
How dreadfully careless she had been!

When she reached Pierrefitte the sun
was shining again. Brilliant sunshine
poured down on the white walls of the
Hotel de France and filled the small
square in front of the station. In the
lazy late afternoon warmth the hotel
looked the laziest and most peaceful
spot in the Pyrenees. Nothing living
troubled it save two cocker spaniels
asleep on the terrasse.

Rosamond walked in the lobby of the
Hotel de France and after ringing
various bells — both hand and electric — ■
the manager emerged from a stuffy
little office wedged between the kitchen,
hotel restaurant, zinc bar and drawing
room.

“Madame ?”

“I should like to garage my car and
sleep here for a few nights,” Rosamond
announced in her most confident
French.

The manager bowed, and she noticed

BLUE MOUNTAINS 109

a look of mild wonder flit over his face
as he “took in” her clothes.

“But perfectly, Mademoiselle,” he
answered in English. “We have a most
beautiful room looking out on the
mountains.”

“This is not my coat,” Rosamund
murmured apologetically, as she noticed
the manager’s eyes fix on it again. “A
gentleman lent it to me and I forgot to
return it. He was a perfect stranger,
who very kindly helped me when my
car broke down on the road.”

Her tone was confidential.

“You are a stranger, mademoiselle;
but not so the coat.” His fingers flicked
the air. “All Pierrefitte knows that
coat. Yes. Perfectly. It belongs to
Major Nasmyth. He is an odd type,
mademoiselle. He tests aircraft for the
French Air Force. He is attached to the
military air port at Mabore.”

“Major? Army major? But — surely
not an army major?”

“You misunderstand perfectly made-
moiselle,” the manager went on. “The
gentleman is veritably a major in the
French army. He’s an Englishman, of
course, but he serves in our grand
French army. He is a friend of the Re-
public. He is quite a figure around this
part of the Pyrenees. All the world
knows our Major Nasmyth.”

THE MYSTERIOUS CRASH

Major Nasmyth? Some small
denizen of her consciousness was trying
to suggest information about that name.
She suddenly realised that the plain
Major Nasmyth, separated from John

no

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

Gawdy, was somehow familiar to her.
It was just a shade odd that the name
somehow connected itself with aviation,
and just worth a twitch of the memory
to account for it. -

Ah! Yes! Now she had it. Major
Nasmyth had been winner of the King’s
Cup Air Race in 1933. But that was
not the event which had brought his
name so glaringly into the public eye.
No, notoriety became linked with his
name a month or so later, when he “ran
off” with a Pandolfo-Cygnet war-plane
and crashed in some remote French
village.

This Pandolfo-Cygnet smash was an
inexplicable affair and started up all
kinds of speculations in the newspapers
at the time. Questions were asked
about it in Parliament, but never satis-
fastorily answered. The circumstances
under which Major Nasmyth had
crashed with one of our hush-hush
planes five hundred miles from where
he should have been flying, were clouded
with mists and surmises. Anyway, he
resigned from the R.A.F. and nobody
heard anything more about him from
that day onwards.

Gossip said that an unhappy love
affair was at the bottom of it and that
he had meant to commit suicide;
slander whispered that his nerves had
given way, and that he had been drink-
ing heavily for some weeks prior to the
accident. Rumours, romantic and fan-
tastic, had floated after his name for
some months.

Now he had bobbed up in this re-
mote corner of the Pyrenees! It did
not take Rosamond long to guess what
had really happened. After the crash
he had feared to face the music in Eng-
land. No doubt the French Air Force
had offered him a hole-and-corner job
and he had gladly accepted the offer.

“He must be quite an interesting
man," said Rosamond.

“Yes, sometimes he has the ‘world-
unhappiness,’ and the people keep away
from him,” replied the manager. “But
he has a heart of gold and I have every

reason to believe he is one of the
cleverest airmen living. However, you
will soon know all about him, for he
lives at the hotel. Oh yes, our Major
Nasmyth is a wonderful man!”

There was a note of adoration in the
hotel-keeper’s voice, profoundly sincere,
that vibrated. If this fellow Nasmyth
could compel a French hotel-keeper to
such expression, he must have some my-
sterious quality which she had failed to
appreciate.

A few minutes later Nasmyth
chugged up to the hotel on his ancient
motor-cycle. He walked up to the
tabled terrasse and flung himself into a
chair. Immediately a waitress rushed
out with a bottle of beer and a glass.
No doubt she had been waiting for him.
She lingered a little, fussing around him
and smiling. The manager hurried to
welcome him and placed the latest
newspapers and a bundle of tooth-picks
before him. Then the porter appeared
with a three-pound trout, which he
dangled before Nasmyth.

“You said trout for dinner,” the
porter explained, and his smile widened.
“And so I go out and catch him.”

Certainly, John Nasmyth gave the
air of being the owner of the hotel, the
universal host. Apparently, he had cast
a spell over the entire staff. Ordinary
mortals must go up to bedrooms to
change boots for comfortable slippers.
Nasmyth’s special brand of wizardry
magicked a chambermaid to his side
with his slippers.

It is only the powerful who can com-
mand such attention.

Later, Rosamond walked out on the
terrasse with the coat on her arm, and
Nasmyth turned leisurely in his chair.

He opened his eyes in surprise, but
Rosamond flushed and somehow felt
awkward.

“You 1 ” he cried. “And my coat! I
have been imagining all sorts of things
about my coat, that you had stolen it,
or left it on a scarecrow or presented
it to the local museum. Yes, I am glad
to see my old coat back — it’s just a part

BEYOND THE LAST BLUE MOUNTAINS

of me. I suppose it seems silly to you.
You see, this coat came through several
scraps in Palestine and on the Teruel
front in Spain . . .” He stopped short
and shot one of those dazzling smiles.

“I say what a brute I am. I really
meant to say I am glad to see you again.
That was very bad, you know, putting
the old coat before a lady. Here just
take a seat at my table — do, won’t
you?”

GETTING ACQUAINTED

Rosamund
sat down. He
was a nice
man, she de-
c i d e d. He
seemed to
take every-
thing in a
careless yet
serious way.
He certainly was a change. He did not
pay compliments or make advances.

How long had he been here? In
France she meant? Four years? Why
on earth was he, an Englishman, in the
French Air Force?

“I knew that would puzzle you,”
Nasmyth laughed. “What I’m doing
here, in a sleepy corner of France, just
fooling around a French army aero-
drome. But I’m sorry I can’t satisfy
your curiosity. Secrets of state . . . mili-
tary secrets. Listen!” he added, lean-
ing with sudden eagerness towards her.
“My affairs are complicated, and if you
are really kind you won’t ask me about
them. But you will probably hear all
kinds of wild tales about me. You
need not believe any of them. . . I’m
not a hero, and I’m not a craven. Only
just an ordinary chap holding down a
job.

They talked on: of Biarritz, where
Rosamond had spent a month’s holi-
day; of the Pyrenees, which Nasmyth
knew from end to end.

“I say,” said Rosamond. “Do you go
in for mountain climbing?”

“Climbing? Of course I climb!” His
hand swept over to the snow-line of the
Pyrenees. It hovered like a fluttering-
ing bird. “I’ve climbed all the most dan-
gerous mountains! Yes! Rather.
When I first started rock-climbing out
here it put the wind up me no end.
After I fell off to sleep I dreamt dreams
of precipices. I fell down dark pot-
holes. I hurtled over precipices, I fell
and fell, and floated, and then fell
again. I stood on perilous ledges which
suddenly crumbled away and left me
clinging to a handful of grass.

“I suppose we all feel the same when
we first begin rock-climbing. It’s like
flying. There is something which says
very urgently: ‘Don’t go up to-day;
don’t climb that wall of rock; take the
mule track and be safe.”

“Mm,” said Rosamond, and pressed
her lips together, “I know.” But she
was thinking. He’s always strung up.
Been going the pace for some years.
Never know which way he’s going to
jump between fear and reckless
bravery. Perhaps his honour would go
down at a laugh. So boastful . . . And
yet so gloriously foolhardy.

Later, they dined together at a
superb mahogany table, which sparkled
with some pieces of fine old silver, and
next morning they took breakfast in the
garden, where cocker-spaniels drowsed
in the sun-drenched untidiness of the
kitchen doorway, and honeysuckle gave
out its swooning sweetness.

“He’s most frightfully respectful,”
said Rosamond to herself. “I might be
— no, not the Queen of England, but
somebody like Florence Nightingale.”

It was an unusual sensation after the
over-familiar ways of the Bright Young
Men of her own set.

A week passed on wings to Rosa-
mond; wings of such happiness and
swiftness, that she could have sworn
seven days previously could never have
been conceived, much less experienced.
One day she took the bus to Luz St
Sauveur and did not return until after
dinner, and taking a seat on the tcrrasse

iia

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

she found Nasmyth there, glowering
like an angry schoolboy.

To her great surprise he had tamed
his black hair: it was brushed flat and
glossy. The change improved his
appearance beyond belief. His face,
bronzed by the sun, his singular blue
eyes and the clear white of his teeth
came as a distinct shock to her.

He was wearing a new French uni-
form and on the tunic a kaleidoscopic
row of medal ribbons made an imposing
show. He left his table and joined her
without his customary:

“May I?”

She chaffed him about his lapse of
manners.

“Oh, don’t rot, please. I’ve had a
hellish day. I was so worried about
you, Rosamond.”

“When did I give you permission to
call me Rosamond?” She demanded
sharply.

He did not reply at once — only
scowled fiercely.

“Look here, Rosamond ”

“Look here, John ” she laughed

outright. “And why should you be
worried?”

“Well, when they said that you went
off with ropes and climbing-tackle and
when you did not return for dinner I
was afraid that you might have met
with an accident Don’t go off like that
again. I can’t bear long days alone. I
came up from the aerodrome at lunch-
time and the whole place seemed dead
without you. I think I shall go dotty
when you leave the hotel.”

“Really . . . John, don’t be foolish.
You must square up to life. I can see
that you are a box of nerves . . .”

“It’s no use you saying ‘Really!’
in that magnificent tone of voice and
lifting those beautiful eyebrows and
laughing in that mocking fashion, be-
cause ”

“Well?”

With love’s quickened instinct she
immediately divined a surge of emotion
passing through him.

“Rosamond,” he whispered, “don’t

ever go away. While you are here I can
face any danger without fear. If you
leave me I shall stop living . . . stop
breathing freely.”

She got up.

“I must go,” she said tremulously.
She dare not look at him. Her
throat and eyes were besieged with
waves of burning emotion.

HALF HERO

Rosamond came down next morning
in mountaineering kit. She went in for
that second-rate kind of mountaineer-
ing, which is so dear to dons and
American professors. Possibly she was
a little more daring than the average
woman climber. Anyway, she carried
modern equipment — pitons, rock-axe,
and a length of Beale’s famous rope.

“John,” she said. “Come with me
to-day. Come and be a mountaineer. I
want someone to give me tips about
modern rock-climbing.”

John regarded the frayed gold braid
on his tunic and cleared his throat.

“I am sorry ... I am very sorry
but it is impossible. I am testing a new
Turret Fury to-day and no one can
take my place. I am the only man who
can handle this type of machine. My
duty is to be on my job when I am
called. And, do you know Rosamond,
I am filled with dread . . . afraid.
Soul and pride are weak to-day. I don’t
like the idea of taking that flying-
dragon up. And yet I am one of the
most adventurous flying men in the
French air force. Still — good airmen
are always temperamental and uncer-
tain people: one day boasting, drink-
ing, malingering and funking; and the
next day swimming in ice-cold water,
climbing precipices, drinking little and
sleeping hard.”

Rosamond nodded quietly to herself.
His hedging did not deceive her. She
knew him for what he was: half-hero
and half-braggadocio. His father, she
imagined, had put him into the air force

BEYOND THE LAST

rather against his will, and as a flying
officer he must have grappled with
dread of flying every day — must have
always been urging himself to face and
master panic fear.

"Look here, John!” she said, “if you
think you are throwing dust in my eyes
you are mistaken. Your will-power is
vacillating between dread and laziness.
You keep on delaying and delaying any-
thing that requires grit and energy. You
just float through life like a piece of
drift-wood. I suppose I shall find you
still sitting at this table drinking and
smoking when I return in four hours
from now.”

"Whoa!” cried Nasmyth. “Don’t
bully me. I feel despondent and lax
this morning. Yes, you are perfectly
right, Rosamond. You have discovered
the death-beetle which is burrowing in
my timbers. I have not the habit of
pride. When I feel like funking a
thing . . . well, I funk it . . .”

He put his sensitive hands through
his rebellious hair and gave her a dim
ghost of that bright smile of his, and
it clutched at Rosamond’s heart so that
she could hardly breathe. At that
moment in one lightning flash of intui-
tion she knew that she had met the
man she was going to love above all
others — the man of her destiny.

Her mind was lanced by the thin
edge of realisation that she had been
ensnared by the very thing which she
had always sneered at — fate. Her
practical mind had always boggled at
any acceptance of Kismet or fore-
ordination. But here she was sur-
rendering to the hand of destiny with'
just as little concern as she would show
over buying a pound of tea. A man
who wasted days — a man of futilities
and perpetual postponements. She
thought of this wildly. Oh! The
stupidness of it all! The muddle of
life! Hadn’t she left college full of
degrees and honours. Hadn’t she
become one of the best women journa-
lists in London? Hadn’t she intended
to make something tremendous of life?

BLUE MOUNTAINS 113

Hadn’t she walked about trailing clouds
of glory? Hadn’t she now everything
that a woman could desire — wealth,
influential friends, and a bright future?

But it must all be brushed aside.
There could be no barrier between her
and this chance-met stranger. There he
was; leaning back and tilting a glass
of wine to his lips, so infernally casual
and careless. Here she was. This Rosa-
mond Blunden and this John Gawdy
Nasmyth.

MEDALS

Rosamond asked the manager of the
hotel about the medal ribbons on John’s
tunic.

“But don’t you know, mademoiselle,
he has won many air victories fighting
in Spain with the 27 th Government
Pursuit Squadron, and made a great
reputation as a fighting pilot in China.
He is the only pilot in die French Air
Force to hold the Gold Medal of
Honour.”

“So brave,” said Rosamond to her-
self . . . “So undisciplined and reckless
— and yet sometimes so inclined to
drift and sidestep life.”

One evening John came in from flying
and Rosamond was alone sitting on the
terrasse. She glanced up as John threw
down his helmet and gloves, and then
became very still, with a downcast face
and hands clenched on the small table.

John walked right by her to the door
leading to the small cafe attached to
the hotel. She had seen him walk
straight to the “zinc” once or twice
before, and knew that he would drink
two or three glasses of fiery cognac just
to steady his nerves . . .

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

“John, don’t go in yet,” Rosamond
whispered.

He came back and stood over her,
and she looked up without a word, with
her face flushed and her eyes alight.
He bent down, kissed her lips, lifted her
and held her in his arms.

Rosamond gave a little smothered
cry to feel herself so held.

“Tell me,” he asked, “tell me, don’t
you care ... a little?”

“What’s the use?” Rosamond
struggled a little and said, “You
mustn’t. . . oh! you mustn’t, John.”
But, even to her, it wasn’t very convinc-
ing. “I’ve got my way to make in the
world, and you’ve got your own career.
Besides, it would worry me to death
every time you tested one of those air
demons.”

“So you would beworried about me?”
he said exultingly.

With a sudden quick movement
Rosamond put both her arms round his
neck and kissed him.

“Is that answer good enough?” she
asked, in a husky whisper, and for a
few minutes the world stood still.

That night John persuaded her to go
to the Lac Bleu and the Pont of Spain.

“It will be lovely in the moonlight,”
he pleaded.

And so John drove her in her car to
a mountain path which looked up to
glaciers, naked rocks and hidden lakes
brimming with limpid deep blue water.
It was lovely.

Here the old, old story was once
more repeated: miraculously, amaz-
ingly thrilling to the teller: mir-
aculously, amazingly beautiful to the
listener. The story which needs no
style or intellectual tricks to make
it new and fresh; the story which
— in spite of the gibes of pessimists and
scoffers — always opens magic case-
ments looking out on faerie seas. And
John told her something more, which
sent a thrilling sensation of relief and
joy through her.

“I should like to tell you something
rather important,” he said. “It can be

told in a couple of dozen words. You
may have heard that I was the ‘bad
boy’ of the English Air Force, and that
I frequently had trouble with my
superior officers. That is true in a way,
and it js true that I was, and still am,
headstrong, undisciplined and often in-
clined to funk things.

“But one thing is not true about me.
I can tell you now because I know that
the secret will be safe with you. I did
not crash with that Pandolfo-Cygnet
battle bomber; I delivered it safely to
the French headquarters, acting on
orders received from my own govern-
ment.

“The reports of my crash and resig-
nation from the R.A.F. were put-up
stories which were intended to prevent
foreign powers taking too much interest
in my part in making certain contacts
between the French army and our own.
I am still an officer of the R.A.F., but
I happen to be on special duty with the
French army.”

THE ROCK DUNGEON

A few days later,
Rosamond, climb-
ing in the hills near
the Pic de Barane,
lost her way. After
walking for some
hours an impene-
trable mist came
down on her. One moment the granite
peaks around her were landmarks,
though dimly seen through a gauzy
veil: the next, Rosamond could discern
nothing but a blanket of dripping grey,
which seemed to press upon her, eager
to penetrate to her skin.

The next thing Rosamond remem-
bered was that the ground rose suddenly
in front of her. As she topped the
ascent she caught her foot in a twisted
root and fell down some unseen slope.
She rolled in soft grey sand for a few
yards and as she rolled torrents of sand
poured down on her from above. The

BEYOND THE LAST BLUE MOUNTAINS

sand choked and blinded her as she
fought to brake her downward fall by
clutching at small bushes and digging
her hands into the sand.

Rosamond must have lost conscious-
ness, for when she recovered she was
lying in a pile of soft sand, and the
dawn was beginning to break dimly
over the edge of the slope down which
she had fallen. As the light grew
stronger she saw that she was at the
bottom of a bowl-shaped crater of rock
and sand. Rock walls rose precipi-
tously for sixty feet all around. Rosa-
mond walked round the base of the
basin to find some place whence an exit
would be practicable.

It was almost certain that some
rocky pathway climbed up to terra-
firma above her. She had her ropes and
climbing-gear, and felt that she could
tackle a fairly difficult scramble up.
But nothing in the nature of a track-
way existed. She was imprisoned in a
great rock dungeon, over which brooded
a barbarous and depressing air.

Rosamond picked a spot in the face
of the wall which could be approached
by steep sand-banks, and managed to
crawl upwards for about twenty feet,
but as she mounted above that height
the shifting sand commenced to pour
down in tons and sent her rolling to the
bottom again.

She was then constrained to turn her
attention to that portion of the sur-
rounding rock wall which was free from
sand. After all the rock looked solid
enough and many of the ledges above
were wide enough to rest on. She
carried about twenty steel pegs in her
ruck-sack and she could drive them into
the face of the rock and so work her
way upwards.

It would be slow work, of course.
Possibly it would take about twelve
hours to reach the lip of the pit. Well,
she had all the day before her, and if
she approached the job resolutely,
driving each steel piton well into the
rock, and making sure that it was per-

ii5

fectly secure before passing upwards,
she had nothing to fear.

She hammered in the first piton and
pulled herself up by it, knotted a rope
in its ring and clambered on to a ledge.
After three hours’ work she had
ascended about fifty feet, and was
moving up a steep pitch to gain a wide
ledge where she could rest before
ascending further.

She did not employ pitons on the
pitch, but cut out small steps with her
axe. It was hard work, and the sun was
now beating down on her pitilessly. With
misgivings she noticed that the rock
was softer here. Still she toiled upward
— step after step. She could hear the
broken rocks falling far below her as
she cut her way upwards with the axe.
Must be up a good hundred feet now.
Wouldn’t look down, anyway.

What a fool she was to imagine that
she would ever make a climber 1 Here
she was going weak at the knees over
just a straightforward spot of moun-
taineering. She’d never look a mountain
in the face again. Now up with the right
foot. Where was the foothold?

Where was it? Her boot scraped
desperately over the rock, but the hob-
nails were not biting. Why didn’t they
bite? Ah-h-h. So that was it. She had
cut a step on a soft patch and it had
crumbled away. She tested the face of
the rock above, right and left with her
axe. Here it was as soft as putty.

That was a great shock to her. There
was nothing left to do but to descend
and try at some other spot. On reach-
ing the bottom of the pit an access of
sudden fury took hold of her and she
again rushed up the steep sand slopes,
yelling and sobbing, but time after time
she fell back baffled and bleeding.

Once when she had almost gained a
ridge above the barrier of sand a great
shelf of water-logged rubble began to
slide, and it gathered impetus and
volume till it fell with the thunder of an
avalanche. Rosamond only just rolled
out of the way in time to miss it.

At one corner of the pit she found

,i6 GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

a chine. It was as narrow as a coffin,
and the rock sides had been worn
smooth by the perpetual fall of rain-
water. Again Rosamond commenced to
drive in pitons and ascend. But it was
growing dusk, and she was soaked to
the skin and chilled to the bone.

When she had toiled up about thirty
feet a sudden torrent of water forced
her back. Trembling with terror and
exertion she staggered clear of it and
collapsed. How long she lay there she
had not the faintest idea; but she was
roused by a voice.

THE VOICE

It seemed
that someone
was calling
to her in a
whisper. She
could have
picked out
that drawling
call from a
thousand
other voices.
It was John
calling. She fancied that she might be
delirious, until a handful of wet sand
fell at her feet.

She looked up and saw John standing
above the ledge which she had reached
with rope and pitons. But the man she
looked upon now was another John.
She had not noticed that square-cut
chin before, and there was something
in his expression which seemed to say:

“We Nasmyths do what we want to
do, when we want to do itl”

“Come up the rope to me and bring
the rope up after you,” said John.

His tone was compelling, and after a
moment’s hesitatigp she once more
climbed from piton to piton with the
aid of the rope, and stood below the
ledge on which John was standing.

“You’ll be as safe as the rock of ages
with me, darling. I’ve climbed this pot-
hole dozens of times. There are six

firm ledges — they run through various
layers of sandstone. I know all the
hand-grips and foot-holes. Besides, I
left steel steps in the upper part of the
rock a year ago. I can still see them
above me. It’ll be child’s play getting
out now. Don’t be frightened,” he said
tenderly.

At that moment she heard a roll of
thunder and saw a dark wall of cloud
rushing over from the north-west.

“Throw your rope to me,” John
ordered. “We must get out of this
before the storm breaks. . . . Tie your
axe and some spare pegs to the end of it
and throw it up.”

Now she was nearer to John she
noticed that his lips were swollen, and
just below an untidy lock of hair there
was a trickle of blood. She supposed
that a splinter of rock must have fallen
and cut his head. There was a wild un-
earthly light in his eyes, and as she
looked up the ridiculous thought came
into her min d that this was a spirit and
not John Nasmyth at all.

She did as she was bid, and John
made the rope fast to the ledge and
lowered the looped end to her. She
slipped the loop over her head and
under her arms; heard John panting
with exertion, and was conscious that
she was being dragged up the face of
the rock. The next moment she found
herself safe on the shelf beside John.

“Oh, Rosamond, thank God you are
safe,” said John softly. “When I heard
that you were missing I nearly went
mad.”

“But your face, John?” she whis-
pered, as he took her in his arms.
“Your poor face! Oh I It is cut about
so! What has happened?”

John laughed gently.

“Oh, nothing to worry about now,
dear. I crashed that Turret-Fury
battle-plane a few hours ago. By all
the rules of the game I suppose I should
be dead, but the rummy part of it is
I escaped with only a few cuts and
scratches. And yet the plane was
smashed to pieces.”

BEYOND THE LAST BLUE MOUNTAINS

A spasm of pain crossed his face, but
he smiled, and no woman yet born
could see John Nasmyth smile without
smiling too.

At that instant the storm burst furi-
ously over the mouth of the pit. They
were in the focus of its fury, and every
few seconds the lightning struck the
rocks above them with explosions like
bursting bombs. Small rocks were split
away from the lip of the pit and crashed
down on each side of them.

Then came a blinding blaze of violet-
coloured fire and Rosamond felt as
though a sheet of cobwebs had been
thrown over her. She awoke a few
minutes later to find herself alone.
John had vanished. She was filled with
sudden dread. Had he been struck with
the same flash of lightning that had
stunned her?

Presently hail came, and hurricane
rain. Combined with the thunder and
lightning it made a scene such as Rosa-
mond prayed that she might never again
witness. Finally, when she was almost
exhausted and could hardly move, there
came a providential abatement, and she
was able to look about her. She peered
over the ledge, expecting to see John’s
crumpled body on the rocks below her,
but not a sign of him could she see.

It certainly was most mysterious.
Had she really seen John or was it his
ghost? Or had she been dreaming? The
encounter was so fantastic that she
could not believe it. She looked up
above and there she could see the steel
steps which John had told her about
only a few minutes previously. Any-
way, those steel steps were real enough.

She collected up the rope, ice-axe,
steel pins and her ruck-sack, and pulled
herself up to the first step. Yes, John
had done his work well. This step and
each one she mounted was driven home
and cemented with genuine craftsman-
ship. In twenty minutes Rosamond
had reached the lip of the pit in safety.

As Rosamond tramped down the
mule-track to Pierrefitte, she turned

the whole affair over and over in her
mind. She almost became convinced
that some fantasy in her brain had
deceived her eyes. Her logical preju-
dices rose strongly within her, and she
passed the occasion just as one might
pass from some wild and fantastic
screen play to the reality of the crowded
streets outside.

She had a confused remembrance of
the guests of the hotel bending over her.
She knew the glint of a French lady’s
diamond ear-drops, the gold band
around the German’s professor’s
smoking-cap. She sat there vaguely
saying over and over:

“Where’s John? Has he returned
yet? Oh, what happened to John?”

She heard someone whisper:

“Don’t tell her yet.”

Then the manager came and asked
the guests to stand away. He only said:

“Poor child 1” and smoothed her
hair.

Something in his face smote Rosa-
mond with dread.

“Tell me,” Rosamond urged. “Where
is Monsieur Nasmyth? Has he re-
turned yet?”

With infinite effort the kindly
Frenchman pulled himself together to
tell Rosamond the cold truth.

“No, my dear, he will never return
again. He crashed at dawn and was
killed. All Pierrefitte mourn the loss of
a friend and brave gentleman. ... It
is a tragedy. . . .”

Rosamond looked up.

“No, m’sieur,” she said with a wan
smile. “It is not a tragedy. ... It is a
miracle play.”

Then, with her lips parted and her
shoulders quivering, she turned sud-
denly, and walked out on the terrace,
and turned her face to the silver-blue
line of the Pyrenees.

“Beyond the last blue mountain
barred with snow,” she whispered.
“My dear. Oh! my dear 1” She choked
and stood with a tear-wet handkerchief
gripped in her hand.

The Evil that

Kashoki’s Little Bag
Magic

by M. KELTY

Grows

of Jungle

K ASHOZI was always a good
servant to me, but he never
seemed to be really happy. The
other natives often used to let off their
high spirits in hearty laughter, but this
never happened with Kashozi. Though
of excellent physique, yet he had about
him an air of gloom and a look of per-
petual worry, almost of fear. I taxed
him with this once or twice, but he
always evaded me.

“Is anything worrying you,
Kashozi?” I said to him.

The answer was always the same:
“No, Master, no; Kashozi very
happy here.”

Yet the forced smile and hang-dog
look gave the lie to the reassuring
words.

I got my first hint of the cause of the
trouble when Kashozi was bitten by a
mad dog. We rushed him at once to
old Doctor Lastrange’s house — we were
lucky, of course, to have a doctor so
near. Thanks to that, the doctor was
able to do all that was necessary, but
for the rest of the day Kashozi was in
high fever.

He tossed and turned and looked, of
course, infinitely more miserable than
usual. It seemed to me from his mutter-
ings as if he was trying to rid himself
of something, something that he dared
not part with, though its presence was
a terror to him.

In the evening I spoke to another
native who had known Kashozi in his
early days. But I could get little satis-
faction from him.

“Kashozi, him got a little present,”
he said. “Him too frightened to give

little present back. Him not much like
little present.”

Well, the whole thing was very
mystifying. What little present could
Kashozi have that was causing him
such anxiety? I wanted to get to the
bottom of it, but what with leaving for
England at the end of the week and
Kashozi recovering very quickly, the
“little present” slipped out of my
mind.

On the trip home, however, it came
back to my memory, and I thought I
would ask Kashozi if he had brought
his “little present” with him. I never
saw his dark skin grow so grey, but he
quickly recovered himself.

“The evil-that-grows will never harm
you, master, Kashozi will guard you
even with his life.”

The poor fellow was evidently deeply
troubled, so I said no more about it, but
walked off to my own cabin.

Fog held us up when we reached the
Thames. Wandering around, I noticed
Kashozi in a corner sitting on his
sailor’s bag and evidently sleeping.
Poor fellow, he didn’t care about the
air of the lower deck bunks, and I often
discovered him up on deck in an un-
easy sleep.

As we were still at a standstill, I
walked leisurely up to him, and then I
noticed a round object by his side. It
seemed at first almost like a child’s ball
which had rolled there accidentally, but
as I drew nearer I discovered that it
was a bag made of pigskin, very tightly
tied up at the top.

Evidently it was intended to be worn
round the neck, but the long leather

THE EVIL THAT GROWS

thong which bound it had frayed, and
it had fallen to the floor. The “little
present” never entered my mind at the
time, but I stooped to pick it up think-
ing that it might contain some keep-
sake from Corani, Kashozi’s wife.

As I did so, the ship’s siren suddenly
hooted, and Kashozi woke with a jerk.
I will never forget the look of stark
horror in his face as he realised I was
stooping for the little leather bag. He
moved like lightning and got to it first.

I remember thinking how deeply he
must value it; and yet I could have
sworn that as his brown hand grasped
the bag a shudder passed through his
body. I looked at him in amazement.
Hastily he tied a knot in the thong
where it had broken and then passed
the loop over his head. As the bag fell
on his breast my suspicions were con-
firmed, for an involuntary spasm of dis-
gust and loathing convulsed his face.

“Dash it all, Kashozi,” I said. “You
obviously loathe that thing. Chuck it
overboard.”

But Kashozi shook his head.

“No, master,” he said, “Kashozi can
never throw away the evil grower.
Knumangi avenges any who scorn his
gifts.”

From that moment I determined to
discover the secret of the leather bag.
Knumangi was one of the old gods of
the swamps, but what he had to do with
it, I couldn’t imagine.

WELCOME HOME

Amy was waiting for me at the
station. Only one who has endured a
similar separation can imagine my feel-
ings as I clasped her in my arms.

“So you’re back, Empire-builder,”
she said jokingly.

I felt almost hurt that she could joke
at such a moment.

“Amy! You’ve missed me? There
isn’t anyone ?”

“Of course not, old sober-sides!” she
laughed. “Come along now. Jump into
the car and I’ll drive you home.”

119

I helped her in and settled myself be-
side her; Amy determinedly pressed her
foot on the accelerator, and I could see
there was to be “no nonsense” until we
reached home.

“The Grange,” where Amy lived with
her father, was only separated from our
house by a stretch -of common whose
“Land for Sale” board has not yet
attracted purchasers. As we were pass-
ing this stretch and I was watching with
delight the same old lolloppy English
rabbits gambolling among the gorse,
Amy turned to me.

“By the way, I must see more of
Kashozi. I was always interested in
him from your letters, and now he has
endeared himself to me still more by
insisting on waiting for ‘him-bus’ so
that we could have our drive alone.”

“Heavens,” I said, “I’d forgotten all
about him. He’ll be hopelessly lost by
now.”

“Don’t worry,” said Amy. “I left
Topsy to look after him — though, poor
soul, she looked fearfully embarrassed
when she saw who she was to take
charge of. Well, here we are. You can
go home now and then come over and
tell us all about wild Africa as soon as
they can spare you.”

Kashozi went down very well with
all the family, yet they all had the same
impression of him.

“Why was he so quietly miserable-
looking? Had I played the big white
boss and knocked all the joie de vivre
out of him, or something?”

However, I didn’t pay much atten-
tion to these remarks. My whole
horizon was bounded that day by Amy.
After we had sat and sat and literally
talked ourselves hoarse, we just sat and
sat and looked at one another. She was
so gloriously the same for, of course,
none of my insane fears of her had
come true. It was incredible that she
had never wanted anyone but me, and
yet in this most marvellous world it was
true.

Suddenly Amy laughed and spoke.

“Have you noticed, old thing, that

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

120

that is the moon shinihg in at the win-
dow and I think Father has dropped
his boots a little more often than the
process of undressing normally im-
plies.” .

I, too, laughed, though I must admit
I felt a little foolish. However, I
quickly said my adieu and walked
across the common home. Mother was
sitting up for me, and I felt very selfish,
having given her so little of my first
day home. However, she had no re-
buke for me, but mixed me a night-
cap and insisted on seeing me to my
room.

“We’ll put a bit of flesh on those
bones for you, my lad,” she said. “You
look a bit too much like a malaria
resurrection case for my fancy at pre-
sent. And we’ll try and brighten up old
Kashwoozi, or whatever you call him.
Poor benighted heathen, he looks as if
he was always seeing a world of ghosts.
Well, sleep tight, son, and pull your
blind down. The moon is shining full
into your room.”

As I opened the door I realised the
truth of her words. The room was
almost as bright as day with that queer,
unsubstantial, ghostly brilliance of
moonlight on a still and cloudless night.

I remembered that the moon was shin-
ing like that the night before I met
Amy. Sitting up in bed, I had looked
over the trees to the house next door,
wondering if the little girl we had seen
moving in with her father and mother
would come out to play the next
morning. , , . ,

Now, as I sat on the edge of the bed
aglow with my own delight in living, my
thoughts turned — by contrast, I sup-
pose — to Kashozi.

“I wish I could do something for that
poor fellow,” I thought, and almost
without realising what I was doing, cer-
tainly before any definite plan of action
had formed in my mind, I found my-
self walking cautiously along the corri-
dor to the room that Mother had
assigned for his use. To my surprise
the door was open and I crept in.

THE BAG OF MAGIC

The idea of seizing that wretched bag
and destroying at once it and Kashozi’s
mysterious fears, had taken firm root
in my mind. Where was the thing? I
looked on the dressing-table, on the
chairs — everywhere. There was no sign
of it.

I stooped over Kashozi, who even in
sleep seemed to be crouched in a defen-
sive attitude. The beastly thing was
still round his neck. But fortunately it
had been tossed on to the pillow and
lay a little way from his head. I had
my pen-knife in my pocket, and with
anguished carefulness I cut the leather
thong, seized the little bag, which to my
surprise felt somehow damp and
spongy, and in a trice I was out of the
room.

As I drew the door gently behind me
I heard Kashozi groan, as if he were in
the uneasy border-line of sleep and
waking. Even if he were to awaken,
however, I was determined not to give
his “little present” back to him. The
fire would still be in downstairs, and
that would be the best place for it.

Some filthy old charm from the
jungle, I supposed it to be, and I was
not eager to soil my fingers with it.
But as I approached the landing over
the hall, I was surprised to see Topsy,
our faithful old maid-servant, coming
up the stairs. Poor Topsy, it must have
taken her some time to get over her
journey home with an African nativel
Well, I wasn’t going to risk meeting
her on the stairs. I felt curiously averse
to anyone seeing me with that little
leather bag. So I turned back to my
room intending to get into bed at once.
By this time my right hand, in which I
carried the thing, was feeling quite wet
and clammy.

I transferred it to my left hand, using
my right to guide me round the edge of
the stairs, for here toe moonlight could
not penetrate. Mother had often com-
plained of the darkness in the passage,
and I could not switch on my landing

THE EVIL THAT GROWS

light without Topsy seeing it from
below.

Ugh! how clammy my hand felt, and
there was a frightful stench — from the
bag, I supposed. I raised my hands to
my face, but to my astonishment there
was no smell there at all.

Now I was at my own room. I went
in and placed the thing on the dressing-
table, which happened to be most in-
conveniently placed in the darkest
corner. Somehow, I could not go to
bed yet. Whether it was the bright
moonlight, or the excitement of seeing
Amy after such a long time, my pulses
were racing far too quickly to sleep.

Should I read a book? No! I felt
real life was too interesting to sacrifice
it even for a minute to the unreal. I
would undo Kashozi’s box of tricks.
That was it. I might as well see what
was inside it.

I took it in my hands and carried it
to the window. Would to God I had
pulled down thp blind and shut out that
pallid radiance. Why I could not have
done this and switched on the electric
light, heaven only knows. On such
foolish actions may the most precious
life depend.

It took me some little time to un-
fasten the bag, and in the end I had to
have recourse to my pen-knife to cut
the thongs. At last it was open, and a
grey sponge-like mass protruded itself
at once from the top.

What on earth was it? I prodded it
with my finger, for the flaccid covering
seemed like a kind of fungoid growth.
As I did so, I held the thing to the
window, trying to peer into the heart of
the unpleasant-looking plant, if plant
it was.

Just as I did so a light cloud floated
away from the moon’s face and the
rays poured straight into the noisome
centre, which I swear was pulsing l ik e
a human heart. At the same time an
indescribable odour assailed my senses,
as suddenly as if a mass of putrefaction
had been hurled into my face. It came
from the heart of the thing in wave

upon wave, conjured up by that cold
but almost tropical intensity of the
harvest moon.

I almost flung the thing from me.
Almost — for immediately following the
first rankly nauseating stench I dis-
cerned a compelling perfume, so pecu-
liar and absolutely fresh to my experi-
ence that I felt I must have more of it.
I held the beastly thing nearer to my
face, at the same time repulsed and
fatally fascinated.

All the time I could feel that faint
and sickly pulsing in the centre of the
thing. The foul stench surely pre-
dominated, and yet I was bound by
that faint thread of treacherous beauty
which seemed to run through it.

BLOOD LUST

I loved the thing. I would do any-
thing for it. My head was swimming —
what matter? Others would try to take
it from me. Let them try. I hated
them. I loved only it. I hated every-
one. I would kill. Yes, that was it,
kill— kill— kill.

When I think of the horrible lust for
blood that obscene, filthy product of
the devil-worshipping jungle had pro-
duced in me, even now I feel sick and
nauseated.

Kill — -yes, that was it. Kill. . . .

My pen-knife was still in my hand.
I crept stealthily out of the room. With
one last faint glimmering of sanity I
felt a faint revulsion on discovering
that I had suspended the thing around
my neck. Its dark leaves slithered over
me at every movement. They slithered
to the left, to the right — they caressed
me. They would lead me to fulfilment,
to blood, to pulsing life and creeping
death.

By now I was over the little patch of
common. A weasel looked out at me
with sharp, frightened eyes, and
vanished. I laughed. The stench
hung everywhere now, in the webs
that laced the larches, on the mist that

122

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

hung low on the grass.

What was this frightful stench?
Where was it coming from? The house
of course — the house ahead. I must
reach it and kill. Yes, that was it.
Kill. . . .

I awoke, it seemed years later, to the
cool sounds and scents of an English
early autumn morning. They told me,
then, how Kashozi had suddenly run
screaming from the house, awakened
by what we never shall know. He had
run straight across to Amy’s house,

swarmed up the balcony — he must have
traced me by the horrible scent — and
snatched at the loathsome charm just
as I was lowering my knife towards
Amy’s throat.

The only thing they could not tell
me was why poor Kashozi found it
necessary to rush away from the scene
and hang himself on a beam in the old
coach-house. What happened to his
loathsome “little present” also remains
a mystery. No one ever saw or heard
of it again.

Signals in
the Fog

The Qrey Figure
at the Carriage
Window

by

R. THURSTON
HOPKINS

A NN HARSON was the one un-
forgettable woman of my youth.
• Let me not try to excuse myself
by saying: .

“She was wonderful and beautiful,
but, of course, when I married Nora
Gerrard I forgot all about her.”

No, I never forgot her. Even if it
had not been for the station, she would
have continued to live in my memory;
fresh and clear.

I call you a station, but my friends
who travel up and down the line with
me refer contemptuously to you as “a
dump.” But then they don’t know the
secrets we share between us, do they,
old station?

Your rotting timbers speak to me,
and I know your mute language. Your
mellow red-brick walls have imbibed
shadows of years ago . . . shadows of
myself and shadows of dear Ann. Did
I say shadows of Ann? Well, shadows

perhaps is a moderate way to express
it. I think your walls hold something
more potent than shadows. . . .

It must have been a blow to you
when they electrified the line and ex-
presses, running four to the hour, sup-
planted the old steam trains and you
found yourself closed up and deserted.
It’s a wonder the strain and vibration
hasn’t shaken you to bits and scattered
you all over the grassy embankment.

I’ll confess I forgot all about you.
But then, during the first year of my
marriage, I forgot about most things
which preceded Nora’s entry into my
life. Most things except Ann.

True, the memory of her suddenly
ceased to summon that old dull pain,
but, nevertheless, I continued to think
about her on occasions, because, beside
being beautiful, she was a talented
artist, and it was this which was re-
sponsible for bringing her features be-

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

fore my eyes when I least expected it.

Until the day when Nora and I had
our first quarrel, you were nothing more
than a whissssh as we flashed by, clat-
tered over the set of points and swept
round the bend. But on this particular
day, I chanced to glance out of the
window and caught a fleeting glimpse
of your blurred name — Bramling. The
next instant we were past, before I even
had time to see if the wisteria still
climbed over the roof of the waiting-
room or the ramblers still entwined the
railing running along the back of your
platform.

The next day I waited for you and
tried the old trick of switching round
my head in order to slow up the speed
for one instant. Yes, you were looking
the same. You hadn’t altered a bit
since that summer morning when Ann
and I stepped out on your platform.
Ann, the woman I loved.

That was a long time ago, but the
details of that day are a little blurred
just as if some artist, such as Whistler,
might have painted the picture of my
memory.

Remember that morning? Ann with
her large, grave eyes and lanky gait of
a schoolgirl. Ann in a cool, summer
dress and a silly little hat over one eye.
Ann saying:

“This is our day, Mart.”

Did you know she really meant:

“This is our last day, Mart?”

She was an art mistress and I was a
student at the same school. I fell in
love with her one day during tire
anatomy lesson. She wasn’t taking the
class, but talking to another of the girl
students.

I can see her now, wrinkling her
brows, her lips slightly parted, sway-
ing on one foot. Then she glanced
round and caught me watching her. I
looked away, but I could feel her
smiling.

One day she came into the life room
before the model or any of the students
had arrived. I was working on a little

pastel. I still have it somewhere. That,
too, is a little blurred.

I was too shy to look up, so I pre-
tended to be more interested in my
work than in her presence, although
this was very much the reverse. I
heard her moving about among the
canvasses standing with their faces to
the white plaster wall, then she walked
over to where I sat before an easel and
glanced over my shoulder.

DEGAS — AND AGES

“You know, that reminds me of a
Degas," she said.

I thought she was suggesting the
sketch was not my original idea:

“I didn’t copy it,” I replied defen-
sively.

“I know you didn’t. Degas never
drew a leg like that. He would’ve fore-
shortened it.”

She was right; God knows I was no
Degas! I said as much.

She nodded thoughtfully and pursed
her lips. “Then why let your admira-
tion get the better of your own ex-
pression?”

I shrugged.

“I’m beginning to think I haven’t
much of my own.”

“You talk like an old man. Now if
you were my age ”

“You’re not a lot older than me,” I
interrupted gallantly.

“I’m thirty and you’re not yet
twenty.”

She was right again. I was eighteen.
It made me angry to think that my
youth was so obvious. I wouldn’t
swallow that about her being thirty.
She didn’t look a day over twenty-one.

“Are you going to do something?”
she inquired suddenly.

“How do you mean?”

“Something worth while. Aren’t you
filled with an intense longing to create
a work of art which will last ... as
long as Degas’ has?”

I assured her I was.

SIGNALS IN THE FOG

“Words, words,” she mocked, then,
seeing that I was offended, she smiled
and asked to look at some of my stuff.

I showed her, and, because I was
starved of praise or encouragement, her
words of approval were sweet music in
my ears. Any artist who has worked
alone, experiencing all the doubts of his
worth, all the torturing fears of eventual
failure, will know what I mean when I
speak of finding a kindred soul. Loneli-
ness has killed more artists than lack
of food and drink.

Small wonder that I fell in love with
her, but great wonder that she should
see anything in my callow youth to
attract her in return.

I’m very nearly an old man, but I
know now that she really did love me.
You, too, you mass of sun-blistered
boards and faded posters and grime-
encrustered glass, you know that for
you had a hand in telling me long after
it all happened.

I say “after it all happened.” Did it
ever happen? Sometimes I have a hard
job to convince myself.

That first day you saw us. It was
the first time we went out together, so
you were in at the beginning and the
end. There was a wood not far from
you. Now it’s levelled to the ground
and red-roofed bungalows stand on the
spot where I kissed her.

Immediately afterwards I exclaimed:

“Gosh, I’ll be a famous artist even if
it kills me. I’ve just got to be . . . for
your sake . . .”

She drew back out of my arms and
regarded me gravely.

“No, not for me, Mart. Not for any-
thing which you can touch or hold, but
for yourself. For your real self which
doesn’t give a darn if others like it or
not.”

“All right,” I said. “For my inner
self. But I want you as well.”

She shook her head.

“Not both of us. A man can’t serve
two mistresses,”

How right she was. Well, she was
right as far as artists are concerned. An

i*5

artist, if he is going to put the best he
can give into his work should not be-
long to anybody except himself.

You see, artists always have fixed
ideas, peculiar mental twists and mer-
curial tempers, and we both had a
double issue of these things. You know
what happens when an irresistible will
meet an immovable will?

Well, that’s what happened to us.
Perhaps Ann saw that we should always
be wasting hours and days over fruit-
less arguments; anyway, I understood
from the first that we would never
marry.

Did you suspect we had quarrelled
when we stood on your platform wait-
ing for the train to take us back to the
town? We might’ve sat in your gloomy
but sheltering waiting-room and been
absurd, but instead a cold silence hung
between us which only I by humbling
my youthful pride could banish. I did
so later, but precious moments were
lost, never to be recalled.

The months passed. We never
quarrelled again, but all the time I
knew she was never for me. If she had
been I might have become a real artist.
As it is, I earn nice large sums of money
painting pretty posters of pretty girls.

THE LAST TIME

Well, the day came
at last. You know
the last time you saw
us? Remember the
black look on my
face? She had just
told me she was
going away. Going
away. You can have
no idea just what
those two words
meant to me. They
spelt the end of everything.

After she told me, I couldn't speak
because I was on the verge of tears.
Fine romantic lover, I wasl
When I could trust myself, I said:

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

126

“Why? You can’t. Not now. I need
you . . . terribly.”

She looked away.

“And I you, Mart, but it can’t be.
Truthfully and honestly, it can’t be.”

“There’s someone else,” I accused.

“No . . . Mart. There are just some
things more powerful than ourselves,
that’s all. Perhaps you’ll understand
one day.”

“Understand one day,” I cried.
“You’re treating me like a schoolboy
again. You think I’m a child. You
don’t care a damn. You ”

She silenced me by placing her cool
hand over my mouth. I can still feel
the soft pressure of that hand when-
ever I begin to lose my temper.

So you see, I had a little reason to
look black while we were waiting for
the train to arrive. I saw her for the
last time in her seat in the carriage.

A few days later she went away and
I never saw her again — or did I?

Yes, I had a very bad time — I still
recall. I suffered, I suppose, from a
sort of ennui of die imagination. My
paintings became cold-blooded and in-
solent daubs, turned out by the dozen
to bring in very desirable guineas. I
found myself without an object to hold
my will together.

The years rolled past and I met Nora
and married her. I forgot the wood
which they’ve built bungalows over and
the empty days after Ann had gone. I
even forgot I intended to become a real
artist.

One evening I was detained late in
London — I was employed by a high-
class commercial studio which turned
out designs for everything from pickle
labels to the gigantic posters you see
on the hoardings.

I caught the eleven o’clock train
from Victoria and had a compartment
to myself. Directly we passed through
East Croydon station we ran into a
dense fog, and it was almost midnight
before we slid slowly through Three
Bridges.

At regular intervals, signals on the

line went off with a bang and through
the window I glimpsed an occasional
figure silhouette in the flickering light
of a flare. I tried to sleep, but could
not, and suddenly I began to think of
Ann. You say it was curious that I
should suddenly think of a woman I
had not set eyes on for over twenty
years. Well, you’re right. It was.

All the painful joy of those hours
spent in her company returned, and in
my imagination her face was clearer
and nearer, yes, nearer than it had
been for a long time. I tried to con-
centrate on Nora and my son at board-
ing school, but there was a force at
work which proved stronger than my
will-power. I gave up the struggle and
allowed my thoughts to be filled with
Ann.

I hardly noticed passing Claywards
Heath, and not until we drew up with a
jerk did I look out of the window again.

Then I saw you. Cloaked in fog I
recognised you, because the train had
halted so that my carriage was along-
side your dismal waiting-room. No
lights gleamed from your outdated
lamps. Your windows were in dire need
of the attention of a glazier, for the
smaller male population of Branding
had registered, in the manner of its
kind, its disapproval of a railway
station at which trains never arrived
and departed.

THE GREY FIGURE

I drew my news-
paper over the sur-
face of the window
and cleaned away the
steam. Peering out I
strained my eyes to
see inside the wait-
ing-room.

As I peered a
figure shaped itself
in the gloom of your
waiting -room. It
looked a mere blot
of deeper grey in the
greyness, and for an

SIGNALS IN THE FOG

instant, as it moved towards the door,
my heart thumped to the thought that
there was something queer, something
odd and unnatural in the scene on
which I gazed. When the figure passed
through the doorway and stood on your
platform, I could see that it was a
woman. Yes, it was a woman. . . .

Yet there was something lacking,
something which I should have found
missing as soon as I rested my eyes on
her, but for my life I could not have
explained what it was. I watched her
as she came towards my carriage and
I felt that I was watching the awful
violation of some physical law, but
what law I was unable to think. Sud-
denly feeling sick and dizzy, I pulled
down the blind with a snap.

All the cowardice in my nature urged
me to close the inner sliding door of the
corridor and to hold it tight unless the
hideous thing should open it and sit
down beside me. But the other half
of me which despises a coward and is
capable under pressure of displaying a
little courage asserted itself and urged
me to pull up the blind again and see
what was so queer about the woman.

I released the blind. Pressed close
to the window was a face! A face filled
with terror and apprehension — the face
of Ann Harson. Our eyes met through
a fraction of eternity not to be
measured by earthly standards of time.
She raised a pale white hand and
beckoned me to follow her.

As unbidden thought rushed to warn
me that the face was not of this world,
and that it was not holy, and the
sudden knowledge wrung a cry of pain
from me so I was left suddenly and
dreadfully alone. The window through
which the face had looked was empty
save for the fog, which was now clear-
ing and drifting by in small clouds.

Under my breath I was talking to
myself, as I always did when any crisis
found me in a state of agitation.

“Mart, you coward I That was Ann,
the woman you loved, and you’re afraid
of her! She is in some terrible trouble

127

and needs your help. Don’t be a
coward, go and see if you can help
her.”

I must have taken my hat from the
rack automatically. Certainly I never
remembered doing so, just as I never
remembered opening the door of the
compartment, stepping out on your
platform, closing the door behind me
and crossing to the entrance of your
waiting-room.

I took a step forward into the dark-
ness and called softly:

“Ann. Ann. It’s me. Mart. Can I
help you, dear?”

There was no reply. Your waiting-
room was quite empty. How long I
stood there I cannot say, but when I
turned, the train was gone. I could
just make out the gleaming rails and
the flints between the sleepers. The
only sound was the dripping of mois-
ture from the overhanging trees on
your tin roof.

All fear had left me now. My panic
departed as suddenly as it had arrived
and the shadow of apprehension had
lifted. Indeed, I felt happy and glow-
ing with a strange feeling of relief. As
I go back to the rarely visited uplands
of my memory I can still recapture that
feeling of intense relief.

At the time I did not pause to ask
myself why I was filled with that
suTlden glow of confidence, but later,
a few hours afterwards, I paused and
said to myself:

“That was the reason for my panic
when I stepped out of the train.”

After satisfying myself that Ann was
not hidden behind your railings or in
the shadow of the rambler-roses, I
descended your long flight of wooden
steps leading to the road.

I managed to wake somebody in the
village and induce them to let me use
their phone. I told Nora the train had
broken down and that in all probability
I would not be home until the morning.

Then I walked to the “Shepherd and
Dog” inn and put up there for the
night.

128

GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

The next morning at breakfast the
landlord said:

“Dreadful accident at the Viaduct
last night, sir. About fifty people killed
and injured.”

“Which Viaduct?” I asked.

“Barnsbury. Between Bramling and
Brighton. Only a few miles along the
line. The whole structure collapsed
and a train jumped clean off it.”

“What train?”

“The eleven o’clock express from
Victoria to Brighton, sir,” he replied.
“The driver of the train seems mighty

puzzled about being pulled up by a
triple fog-signal at Bramling just be-
fore the accident,” the landlord added.

“Puzzled?” I cut in. “Puzzled?
Why? Fog-signals had been going off
all along the line.”

“Yes, yes, but not on the five-mile
stretch at Bramling. The railway folk
have not used fog-signals there for
some years. I know that for a fact,”
said the landlord ruminatively. He
paused. “You see, I was the last man
who was in charge of fog-signals on
that bit of line.”

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